After the dramatic cliffhanger I gave you in the last chapter, I couldn't find it in my heart to make you wait for too long, so I am uploading this a little earlier than I intended. It's also a bit shorter than my usual chapter length, but it has so much feeeeeeels! Have fun!
XXXIV. I Defy It
Falling, whipped around by violent wind and surging energy, until the deep night sky spiralled around her in a dizzying whirl. She had lost her grip on Natta during the wild flight, broken away from her enemy within the depths of dark space. It had been all she could do to let the rainbow current of her magic carry her onward to the place where she felt Loki and the black dragon plummet to. Mere heartbeats passed, inconsequential seconds in the great river of time. And then she breathed Midgardian air, and only an instant later, her heart was cleaved in two. A white-hot bolt of agony shattered her strongest life-bond, a pain which dwarfed all pains one could experience. Impaled, a spear to the core of the soul, fraying, fleeting, dying –
Ljosira lost control over her body. The sensation snatched away all her senses. She fell from the sky like a rock, unable to steady herself, her wings buffeted by the slipstream of her fall. Her eyes wide open but seeing nothing, she crashed to the ground, tearing up the earth as she went. Fields of grass were carelessly devastated as her descent cut through them like a clean blade.
She transformed in full motion still, crudely stuffing her dragon soul into her mortal body, uncaring that the momentum sent her into a dangerous tumble. Sharp stones skinned her knees, dirt and grass soiled her clothes, her arms and legs would be black and blue – but it didn't matter, it was negligible, paltry. Nothing mattered except for the pain, the unbearable pain as if all her limbs had been severed.
Something was missing, she knew, but her mind shied away from the knowledge as one flinched from touching a gaping wound. She pushed it out of reach, instead coming to her feet the instant she regained control over her movements. The surroundings only received one wild, sweeping glance – an endless plane, grass everywhere as far as the eye could see.
Long silvery blades swaying in a gentle summer wind, and some distance away, a large shadow. Motionless in the darkness of the night, it loomed there like a strange burial mound. Only the single obsidian eye caught the starlight from above, reflecting the branches of Yggdrasil it would never see again. Natta was dead, the great Darkflight dragon's body empty and lifeless.
"Loki!", Ljosira yelled into the graveyard silence. She didn't recognize her own voice, a shrill and panicky thing that sounded closer to madness than sanity.
Nothing answered her. No stirring shadow, no aura, not even an intake of breath. She ran, questing out into the field with every sense she possessed. Her eyes didn't seem to work too well. Everything veered out of focus and she knew a sickening feeling she chose not to acknowledge. Viciously she crushed reality, fleeing into denial, denial, denial. Loki had to be here somewhere, alive, noble heart still beating, vital blood still coursing through his veins – Almost she tripped over him in her frantic search.
In the bed of docile grass, there he lay as if someone had gently set him down beneath the tapestry of stars. Ljosira fell to her knees at his side, reaching for him like a dreamer. She ignored the coppery smell in her nose, the warm wetness on her palms, the sensation of shredded skin at her fingertips. His face had gone slack and expressionless, a serene mask.
In vain she sought the lambent gleam in his half-closed eyes, the glint of life, the flash of a clever smile whenever he had managed to make her blush. There remained nothing of that, only dull blackness. The eyes of a stranger. She poured a tidal wave of magic into him in a desperate attempt to mend, to fix what had been broken, torn and shattered. She knew no restraint, throwing in all she had.
Too much damage, instinct reported to her. There is nothing to do. Gone. Already growing colder. Body and soul disconnecting, the ties coming undone. Mortal. Dead. The energy simply trickled away like water down a drain. It felt as if she tried to revitalize a rock.
"No.", she said with a finality one can only muster when the truth is unbearable. Abandoning caution and sensibility, she dived deeply into his consciousness, groping for the life-bond. So concentrated was she in her mad quest that she did not see the flare of the Bifröst, did not hear the dull clang of Mjölnir dropping to the ground. Thor halted immediately at the sight before him.
"No.", Ljosira said again, her voice quaking with despair. At the other end of the life-bond where she had always felt the brilliant, intricate beauty of the man she loved, a yawning abyss looked back at her. The cold void of death.
"No! You had a decoy, an illusion, a plan. You always do. You always have a trick. Open your eyes and laugh, tell me what a clever ruse you thought up! Tell me you deceived me, just another lie. Wake up. Wake up! This isn't a game! Loki – you can't do this to me! Stop tormenting me – my love, it's over, it's done, we don't have to play anymore –"
Her words went from anger to misery to pitiful pleading, before she broke off abruptly, drawing a shallow breath. Her hand lifted and she stared at it in the pale light, the black blood in stark contrast to the virgin whiteness of her skin. Her eyes were huge, silver orbs – twin moons glowing in her colourless face as the realization dawned on her. Thor could not move. An excruciating moment of silence came and went.
Then Ljosira began sobbing inconsolably, in dry, wracking heaves that made her shoulders tremble as though fits held her in their throes. Dragons do not weep. They cannot liberate their grief through tears, allow it to flow away from them as mortals do, even if it is just one ounce at a time. Her sorrow was made of magic. A meltwater river bursting its banks, drenching the entire field. It gripped Thor in its inexorable current and saturated him with a helpless longing so strong he thought his legs might give out. Colour bled out of his world, replaced by the bleak, monochrome certainty that his brother was gone.
His own sense of loss crippled him as much as Ljosira's pain did. He felt disembowelled by grief, hollow inside. Something irreplaceable had been snatched away from him and he'd been powerless to prevent it from happening.
We lost. We lost it all. Cut in two, we are half, half of what we were and we will never be right again. His heart turned over in his chest when she threw back her head and let out a cry. It was the broken lament of an animal wounded beyond healing, calling out for a mate who would never come home.
Ljosira buckled over and gathered Loki's body into the circle of her arms. Thor could hear her whisper softly to him. She stayed deaf and blind to the sparkling portal that uncoiled on the field and allowed Strange to step through, followed by Stark. Her desolation dwelled in a place words could not reach to describe. It made her ignore all else.
"I felt –", the Wizard began, but Thor quelled him with a single look. The three of them stood in the darkness. Nobody spoke for an unmeasurable time.
"Go away!", Ljosira suddenly broke the silence, making all of them flinch. They did not know if she was addressing them or the whole world.
Stephen Strange shuddered and glanced around surreptitiously, the way people did when they heard a strange noise they could not place. Stark had frozen to a marble statue, his lips pressed into a firm line. Even through his grief, Thor felt the faint brush of something against his mind. It passed him by, moving on towards Loki and Ljosira.
He sensed the presence everywhere at once and yet nowhere at all. The reach of its magic seemed to permeate the entirety of things but so softly, softly, one could almost forget it was there. The word being did not fit this entity – too small a name, too clumsy a description. Gentle tendrils wrapped around his brother and tugged at him, calling him to join eternity –
"Go away!", Ljosira's scream brimmed with defiance. "He's mine! You won't take him!" She encased Loki and herself within something Thor could only describe as a net woven from finest threads of light. She held him suspended there, stubborn to the very end, unwilling to part.
"Who is she talking to?", Stark wondered quietly. Beside him, Strange shook his head.
"Not us. I can sense… something. But it's… I can't even begin to describe it."
"Is this to be our fate, then?", the dragon princess shouted, her voice hoarse, bereft of its musical cadence. "Am I to fly with my wings clipped? Am I to live cleaved in twain? Is that what you wanted me to be until the end of days? Did I protect you to have you take my love from me? After he gave everything to your cause? Are you that cruel, mother to us all? If this is his fate, my fate, I DEFY IT!" The last words tore from her throat like a roar, every syllable ringing with pure denial.
At first, nothing happened. And then, out of nowhere, a great gust of wind swept over the plane of grass. Stark and Strange braced themselves against the gale. Thor watched it lift his cloak, unfolding it playfully.
Strands of Ljosira's silver hair fluttered in its wake, catching a rainbow of greens and blues. Thor lifted his eyes to the sky to see the source of the reflection – shining ribbons had appeared there, stretching across the dark velvet dome. They shifted from bright azure to vivid jade, from simplistic straightness to entangled curves, intertwining and then unravelling again. A beautiful, calm dance, and yet there was a sadness in it that burdened the heart like a solid weight.
"Aurora borealis. Northern lights.", Stark said. He sounded baffled, fascinated. The thunder prince had no reply. If he concentrated on it, he could hear something in the whistle of the wind, feel with a sense he had no name for: a song from a time before time had even existed, so old it needed no words. Magic he could neither grasp nor comprehend surged everywhere around and he was overcome by childhood memories he'd thought long lost, scattered into oblivion.
His mother, reading one late winter night to him and Loki as they both gathered in the shelter of her fur cloak. His father, lecturing him for a juvenile prank while he took the blame, even though he knew it had been Loki's doing. His brother walking beside him, carefree and smiling, still little more than a boy hoping to embark on a glorious adventure someday.
He had not asked for these images, they had overwhelmed him unbidden, and yet there was such emotion in each of them that Thor could barely breathe. He watched the bands of light lean down from the sky towards the small, silver-haired woman in the field, holding her beloved close. Like graceful, iridescent vines they wound and looped, enfolding Ljosira and Loki between them. Strange gasped audibly, Stark just stared and stared.
"Mother?" Ljosira's voice was filled with wonder. Then she disappeared within the shimmering chrysalis. For a sickening moment, Thor thought Yggdrasil would take them both to where he could never reach them – but then the light waned like the fading, last note of a soft lullaby. Luminous flickers danced around the two figures, huddled together as if they were merely sleeping. Cheek to cheek, their faces peaceful, void of tension and pain.
Slowly, Ljosira awakened to reality. For a fleeting second, she seemed dazed, unknowing. Awareness had not touched her again yet, hovering close by to push the bare-naked truth upon her ever too soon. And then, impossibly, the stilled heart beneath her palm gave one erratic thud and leapt to life again. Loki took one swooshing breath, his chest expanding to draw air into his lungs. His eyes fluttered open, darting around sightlessly for an instant before they found her face, smeared with blood and dirt. She just looked at him blankly, uncomprehending.
"There you are." He stopped speaking, momentarily distracted by the roughness in his throat. His voice sounded strange, as if gritty from a long period of disuse. Loki could not fathom why her lower lip trembled all of a sudden. The shiver seemed to spread out from there to her chin and shoulders, and before long, Ljosira was quivering like a shorn lamb left out in the cold.
"I had a strange dream… You were crying in a dark place, all alone. So much that your tears filled a whole lake, black and deep… You called out to me, but I couldn't comfort you. I didn't like that dream… So I said 'Wake me up'. And someone did.", Loki sighed, closing his eyes. He couldn't remember ever being so tired in his whole life. Battered as though beaten senseless, all he managed was to wrap his fingers around the slender hand resting on his chest.
"Was it you?", he wondered. At the same time, he somehow knew that there should have been pain, injury of some kind, irreparable damage… Only there wasn't. Every thought came slow and disconnected, slipping away into an opaque haze. He tried to pull them back into focus, but soon gave up. It cost too much energy.
Words failed Ljosira. She shook her head in tiny jerks, her fingers gripping his so tightly it hurt. Loki didn't object. He couldn't have, because the next moment someone else was with the two of them and they were encased into a fierce bear hug by arms that felt like bands of steel. It knocked the breath right from Loki's lungs, while Ljosira was pressed up against him. She broke into laughter, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound interrupted by frantic gasps and odd little sobs. The emotions carried to him through the life-bond were so erratic, he couldn't make much sense of them. It was like sharing minds with a lunatic.
"Have you both gone mad?!", Loki demanded feebly. "Brother, you're choking me –" It appeared that Thor could not have cared less.
"You were dead, brother. For real this time. And now you're alive." With a tremendous sigh, Thor seemed to gather his wits and let go of them. Ljosira stayed, holding on to Loki like a drowning person to driftwood. He wrapped one arm around her, worried. She was beside herself. Never before had he seen her so unhinged.
"You died on her. She just needs a little time.", Thor replied to his brother's troubled look. Loki was vaguely aware of Stephen and Tony standing a little way off on the field, but he was too overwhelmed to pay them much attention.
"Loki." The severity in Thor's voice made him meet his eyes. "If you do that to her again, I am personally dragging you back from Helheim, or Valhalla, or wherever you will be. I am not watching her go through it again." On hearing that fierce, loyal promise, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"It's a deal."