Loki sighed and smiled as he looked up into the sun, twirling his cane in his hands. Two joggers passed him, taking advantage of the green spaces of Central Park. He relished the freedom of being outside without a chaperone. Though Stark had left the tracker on, he'd allowed Loki to leave the tower the morning after they'd rescued the one-armed soldier. In the days since, he had gone out daily. The summer sun beat down on Loki's disguised face, a necessity after his ill-conceived invasion of New York. He didn't look much like that man anymore but he'd prefer to be left alone.
His only warning was a change in air pressure and a sense that someone was now watching him. Loki held his smile as he turned, nodding at the woman standing behind him. She held her head high, her silvered hair piled in an elaborate partial bun with half left spilling down her back. Her pale orange dress was the Vanir style, so much like his mother's chosen garb that Loki's chest hurt. It didn't help that this was a relative of the former queens, a distant cousin. The fear on her face washed away any resemblance to Frigga she might have possessed.
"Loki." She made no attempt to use his adopted surname or mention his name place.
"Cousin Almveig." Loki set his cane point down on the ground sharply, unable to resist making her start. "Thank you for coming."
"I am here because Thor asked me." Almveig's statement let Loki know two things: she wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Thor, and she wouldn't expect Loki to repay her for today's help. There were many who feared any tie with someone as powerful as Loki, even if that tie was a future favor.
Loki had no hopes to earn the goodwill of the greater inhabitants of the Nine Realms but things like this still stung. "Understood. Did he tell you what I need?"
"Yes." She relaxed fractionally. "You need to know about Jotun bonding."
Loki nodded. "Would you like to take a seat?" He gestured to a bench, then to the street vendor nearby. "Something to drink? Soda is terribly sweet but carbonation is something worth experiencing."
Surprise flickered over Almveig's face at his polite words. "Yes, please." While she took a seat, Loki purchased two sodas and brought them to her. He knew the scholar well enough to know that she loved new experiences. Hopefully, this would put her at ease. When he sat on the same bench - but not too close, of course - she had a thoughtful look on her face. "No one told you what to expect, did they?"
He handed her a cup, watching as her quick mind catalogued the styrofoam container, the lid, and the straw. "Never." His smile turned bitter. "I was told I was Asgardian as Thor." He took a small sip of his soda just to show her how to use the straw. The more relaxed she was, the more she would share.
"I see." Almveig took a sip, her brown eyes widening at the taste and feel of the drink. She coughed slightly and recovered, blinking. "From the onset of puberty, jotun are capable of bonding. This term has a wider use outside their world, but within their culture, it is only applied in the following sense. A jotun will develop strong, deep feelings for another over a period of time. If the bonding process is not interrupted, then a bond will form."
Loki frowned. "The Asgard call it love. Why don't the jotun?"
The scholar smiled thinly. "It's not love, in that it's deeper than that. The Asgard form emotional bonds but that is all they are. Jotun bonding has a mystical element to it. There are several elements in which it differs from love.
"First, there is the duration." Almveig took another drink of soda as her tone had settled into a lecturing cadence. "Jotun bondings are permanent. There are stories in the jotun oral tradition where that ends in tragedy, when one jotun bonds but another doesn't."
"Or when one jotun bonds to a non-jotun?" Loki watched her reaction carefully.
"I've never heard of such a thing." Almveig shrugged off the idea. "Jotun bondings can be one-way so its possible. What I find most interesting about them is that while the Asgard and Vanir are rigid in their sexual preferences, jotun are very flexible. Their bondings occur across gender lines so regularly that there is no cultural expectations that any given jotun will end up with a specific gender. Jotun can have more than one bonding, and can form new ones if they lose the one or ones they are bonded with. They can acquire new bondings, even though bound, and their other bound have few issues with it. It is trusted that the jotun will bond to whom they will, and that is the end of it."
Loki tilted his head. "You said it can be interrupted."
"Yes. Until the bonding is complete it can be disrupted by the target's actions, by the bonder's change of heart, or anything that can cause issues in any relationship." Almveig watched another set of joggers go by as she said, "It is as any other relationship. The fascinating part is how the jotun establishes the feelings and the mystical aspects."
"You mentioned those." Loki kept his voice neutral though anger bubbled in him. He'd thought that the damage done by Odin was over once he'd learned the truth but it had come back to hurt him again. What else did he not know about himself?
"Yes, bonded jotun can sense the object of the bond. I don't mean that they can read minds but they do have an instinctive understandings of their bond's needs. That does mean that they know when they die but it wouldn't help them find one another if lost." Almveig took another drink and finished, "You'll know when it happens. You'll feel something for another person that you've never felt before, something deep, intense, and very comforting. The jotun I've talked to about this and the lore I've heard made it very clear that the bonding experience is unique. I'd think it would be frightening but the jotun find it lovely, or so they say. A connection to another being that we can't imagine." She smiled fondly. "Makes me wish I could be jotun, to experience it."
It was the smile and the wistful sentiment. The old Loki would have never said anything personal to her but the new him wasn't threatened by the idea. This woman wasn't interested in betraying his trust, only in her pursuit of knowledge. "It is something beautiful."
"You are bonded-" She stopped, smiling wryly. "Of course. That's why you needed to know this. May I ask who you are bound to? How did you meet another jotun-" Her words cut off again, her lips parting in quiet shock.
"They are mortal." Loki couldn't stop smiling and he wondered if he wanted to talk about them.
Almveig's expression shifted to sorrowful, though she tried to smile. "Congratulations, Loki."
His chest tightened and he quickly rose. She was prejudiced against mortals, like so many Asgardians and Vanir. "You don't mean that. Thank you for the information."
She reached for his hand and stopped herself. "Loki, please. It's not like that. If they are mortal, they will die sooner rather than later. And you will love them until the day you die, just as much as you love them now. That is a long time to be bound to someone who is gone."
The true concern in her voice turned him back to her. The jotun glanced down at her. "I had-" He cleared his throat. "It was something that had occurred to me."
"And I have to be honest." Almveig's expression wavered between sad and pitying. "I have no idea what a jotun bonding does to a non-jotun. I hope - I suspect - nothing. I just can't tell you what may happen because I'm not sure this has happened before. I can't guide you through this, Loki. I have no advice to offer."
"C'mon, Ward. The more information you cough up, the better it'll go for you." Agent Culver sat casually in his chair, tapping his pen against the desk to a song only he could hear. "The less you give us, the less we can help you."
"You said this yesterday. And the day before, and the day before that." Grant Ward sighed heavily as he stared at his interrogator. "My answer is the same. I don't know any more than I've already told you."
"So you give us some story about alien invasions?" Culver changed the rhythm of his tapping abruptly, turning it into a rapid staccato of sound. "I think you can do better."
Ward dropped his head on the table wearily, and Phil shut off the video feed. He glanced at his team. "That's all we've gotten from him in all the interrogations. Now that the HYDRA cell in Amherst has been cleaned up, I want to focus on this." He let his eyes linger on Skye for a moment. She was cool and calm; it had been months since Grant had betrayed them.
Sometimes, it didn't feel that long.
"So we are we treating this as credible intel?" Triplett asked, hands on his hips.
"We are treating this as intel that matched some weird things Garrett was saying as he died." Phil glanced around the room and noted, "He referenced Loki specifically, saying he 'failed to do it himself and then gave it to someone else'. I think that references the Chitauri invasion."
"Yes, the invasion of New York." Melinda's tone was icy.
Phil ignored the jab; Tony's were better anyway. "However, I don't know that's what Garrett was planning. He blamed Loki twice, first in the past and then in the present or future."
"So what's the plan?" Trip asked.
"We lean on what remains of our contacts hard. Try to find out what Garrett was planning." Phil crossed his arms. "I hope we'll find out what he was babbling. If he's not, let's hope that whatever he had planned was still in the planning stages."
"Is this our priority?" Fitz watched him with distant eyes. He hadn't recovered from what Grant had done to him - not really. His brilliance was still there but it lay under a layer of sorrow and pain.
"Unless something more immediate arises." Phil hesitated, unsure if this was a good move. "Call SWORD. We'll need their help." Melinda made a soft noise that might have been disgust. "I know. But this is their area, so they should have more information than we do."
Steve radiated nervous energy like an electrical field. Natasha reached out and lightly touched his shoulder. He smiled at her but it didn't help settle him at all.
On the other side of the glass, the man known as Bucky Barnes stared blankly at the objects on the table in front of him. The therapist in the room smiled encouragingly but he showed no reaction to the place setting, either the silverware and plates.
"It's like he doesn't know how to be a person anymore." Steve closed his eyes. "It's my fault. I pushed the technician to get him out of there too fast."
"We all wanted him out before the program finished wiping and reprogramming him." Natasha kept her voice soothing. She knew how to talk to targets and keep them calm.
Thankfully, it worked to help friends as well. Steve's shoulders relaxed fractionally. "I worry whether I made the right call."
"That way lies madness, Steve." Natasha watched as Barnes picked up a fork. After a second, his fingers shifted it so that he held it right. "I think he'll be okay. In time."
"In time." Steve nodded. "Loki's been helping him, I think. They talk about it, when Bucky needs it."
Natasha smiled, as often happened when she thought of her jotun lover. "I'm glad. Maybe people will stop assuming he's playing some con."
Steve frowned and Natasha stiffened. She knew that look: he was about to say something he didn't think she'd like. "Natasha, I'm grateful for all that Loki's done. He was the one who figured out that HYDRA had him, he got Ward to talk - I know, without question, that if he hadn't helped, they'd still have Bucky. But Natasha, no one's going to stop expecting Loki to be a bad guy."
The assassin dropped her hand from his shoulder, her jaw tightening. "What is it going to take?" The low growl in her voice filled the air. "People are never going to see he's changed-"
"Natasha, he hasn't changed." Steve cut her off as sharply as she'd cut off his next sentence. "Wait, just listen." His shoulders rose and fell in that little shrug he gave when he was about to try something he wasn't sure would work. "He's helped me and I am grateful for all he's done. But when he started to help, he flat out told me that it was because this had happened to him. He's polite when people are polite to him, mostly but there are those moments of cruelty in him still. He'll make someone jump or start just because he finds it funny. You and Phil are the only people he cares about and that scares me. I don't know what he'll do if something happens to the two of you."
"He has changed. I can see that." Natasha was getting really sick of everyone telling her how horrible her boyfriend was.
"Has he said he's sorry?" Steve phrased the question softly and without judgment.
Natasha stopped. "For?"
"Everything. The attack on New York. Phil." Steve managed a smile. "I can forgive a man for anything if he's sincerely trying to change. I ignored everything I've learned about you because your regret for what you'd done was clear to anyone who heard you talking." He shook his head. "I've never heard anything like that from Loki."
He was wrong but Natasha knew she couldn't say anything to convince him.