To Ride Upon Svadilfari

-Chapter Fifty-Two-

Degeneracy Pressure (Part I)

The moment the words spilled from his lips, Loki knew that he wouldn't have minded the pain of golden thread binding his lips if only he could keep his silence. And with it, his pride.

Hel was no child of his body, but she might well share a spirit of spite with him, for the only person he might be more shamed to speak only truth to was Odin. In a less guarded childhood Thor had been witness to many moments of weakness and he rather thought that the dragon masquerading as a man would, ironically enough, have been able to tease out the dark truths that swam in the murky pool of his heart with that characteristic awful understanding reflected in his eyes. That would have been bad enough, that unasked for empathy.

The Lady of the Grange was given to deep sympathies for races he thought monsters, but her judgment concerning him was set as hard and immovable as Mjolnir beneath his hand. Her tongue was like a lash coated in Jormungandr's venom, burning long after the stroke had fallen. Loki did not like her, though he admired her at times, for those carmine-blighted eyes always felt as if they could look beyond flesh to see where no eyes should.

A rape of the self. That was what those too-intelligent eyes seemed capable of. It was a pity that she represented such a useful weapon against Thanos, because he'd otherwise see her safely dead and buried. No, not buried. There was too much risk of deceit in that. He would set fire to her corpse with his own hands and watch as the heat cracked her bones, if it came to such an end.

But for now, her eyes seemed mostly benign, bewildered as she was by his sudden appearance. He supposed he did not blame her, but he was made uneasy by the fact that she sat astride Skoll as if he were any lesser wolf. Or, perhaps, his unhelpful mind supplied, not as if Skoll were a lesser wolf, but as if she were a goddess of carnage and battle mounted upon the wolf who would swallow the sun.

It was a small mercy that none of this spilled from his mouth, but he doubted the mercy would last.

"Loki," Hermione said flatly. "May I ask why you're on Svartalfheim?"

"I am afraid," he said with all the drollness he could muster, "that you would have to ask Hel that. However, if I must venture a guess, I suppose she thought this would lead to the most amusing outcome for her and the most humiliation for me. Of course, I might be wrong. It has been known to happen."

"The humility's new," she answered just as dryly, but she made no move to dismount Skoll. "But we've been here for what seems like weeks. Have you been skulking in the shadows this entire time?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Loki scoffed. Biting his tongue hadn't allowed him to keep his silence, so he abandoned the non-answer paired with a faint shrug and an even fainter smirk that would have been his preferred choice. Still, either he'd lost time on the Hel-Road or Hermione had gained it; either was possible. This new hobble of honesty didn't cripple him entirely. He still managed to interject a healthy amount of disdain into his next words. "It's taken you weeks, you said? Sounds more like a leisurely tour of Svartalfheim rather than a proper hunt."

Hermione scowled and the snarl that had never fully disappeared from Skoll's muzzle made a reappearance. If he was to be in close quarters with Hermione Granger for the foreseeable future, he was going to make it a priority to accidently 'misplace' her watchwolf.

"Is there any chance," Hermione said bitingly, "that you might turn around and leave us to it, then?"

Loki made a show of examining the hall he'd stepped out of, which was now clearly nothing more than a hall and no longer a nexus with the Hvergelmir. "It would appear not."

Hermione sighed through her teeth, then urged Skoll forward. Before she could come too close, Loki spoke. "If you think to offer me a ride, I far prefer walking to wolfback."

"And I don't generally offer rides on sentient beings without their consent, but we were headed this way when you intruded."

"Then by all means," Loki said in invitation, accompanying it with a dramatic hand gesture.

"How gracious," Hermione said as Skoll padded past, those eerie yellow eyes tracking Loki.

"So who is it that we're searching for?" he asked after a long moment of silence.

"Ivaldi," Hermione answered. "He is-."

He cut her off. "I know very well who he is. It would follow Hel would choose the first king of the Dark-elves. The 'sons of Ivaldi'-that's nearly all that remains in Midgard's stories of the residents of this Realm. But you do realize that Ivaldi has been dead for longer than I've been alive?"

Hermione shrugged, though the muscles in her jaw tightened. "It doesn't substantially change my part in this. It isn't as if I knew where to look to begin with."

"For someone so young, you're quite...pragmatic."

"Old soul," Hermione retorted lightly. "Or perhaps the fact that I've been confronting my mortality since I was eleven years old. Probably a combination of the two."

Loki eyed a corridor that branched from the one they were taking, noting that it led to somewhere that clearly wasn't on this Realm. "Are those common?"

"The time-space fractures? Yes. And generally occupied by something flesh-eating. And there they come," Hermione said without a whit of surprise as a clutter of spiders began to spill across the floor and walls from beneath an otherwise innocuous field of what seemed like poppies in full bloom. There was enough of them that the ominous clicking of their mandibles was audible. "Step lively," she called to him as she twisted her hand oddly, causing a line of fire to race across the floor in front of the advancing line of spiders. Most of them shriveled, but a few had wits enough about them to leap clear-and of course they would be leaping spiders, Loki thought sourly-as he used his own magic to crush them.

"I might yet take back what I said about the leisurely tour," Loki said when they'd gotten far enough away to declare the hall free of eight-legged pursuers.

"It certainly breaks the monotony of the extraordinary architecture," Hermione said with a wry twist to her lips. "But they're growing more common, so I think we're closing in on the disturbance. Which, hopefully, is Ivaldi and not some other time-destroying ghoul lurking in the bowels of a dead Realm. Or something worse."

"Let us hope not."

Several hours and innumerable corridors later, Loki began to understand why Hermione was once again rather gaunt and her hair running amok. She lapsed into a partial silence, speaking only to draw his attention only to aspects of the architecture she found particularly interesting, but she and the Hel-damned wolf stalked tirelessly through Svartalfheim with nary a sign of stopping. And he would swear an oath that she seemed to hear Skoll speaking despite the creature never so much as whining, else she'd grown so accustomed to one-sided conversation it flowed naturally from her lips.

Loki very much hoped the former was not the case, but given how poorly the Norns had been treating him lately, he thought it was perhaps a foregone conclusion that the witch and the wolf had grown close indeed during their stay on Svartalfheim.

He had only to bear with it. When he'd been ignorant of his true birthright, he hadn't been so sensitive to the fact that this creature was the grandchild of his body. Neither Skoll nor his brother, not the Fenrir or Jormungandr had weighed very heavily on his mind. He was a master of self-deceit as well, after all. But now he could no longer ignore that he was monstrous and so was everything he produced. It was almost enough to make one simply give in and enjoy the destruction, but it seemed that no one else was satisfied to let him fall.

Hermione did eventually dismount Skoll to eat, rest, and relieve herself, though Loki wouldn't go so far as to call it making camp. He was well aware of her magical tent, but rather than using it she seemed content to curl up against Skoll's flanks and nibble at some of her preserved food, of which she'd allotted herself a much smaller portion than she'd given the others.

She seemed incongruently small and childlike, when at all other times after she'd revealed herself as a magical entity she'd seemed to have that larger-than-life aura that hung so heavily around Thor. But he wasn't deceived. The smaller the snake, the more potent its venom.

Still, it was in his nature to play with fire, even when he knew it wiser to keep his silence until he and his geas were safely away from this woman. Perhaps it was even the fault of the geas.

His motive was information, for he still knew only what her behavior and the odd off-hand comment could tell him about Hermione Granger and none of that had proved terribly effective in their past arguments. Not that he thought she would need much motivation to fight Thanos given that his goal was the utter destruction of all Realms, but Loki had a need to control what he could of any given situation. Harry and Hermione had already proven themselves to be reliable agents of the good, but only at their own pace and in their own way. He needed them to be malleable in the way Thor had always moved according to his instruction when he could be bothered to hear anyone's advice at all.

"What would your parents say," he said in mock-playfulness, "seeing you now?"

Heroes and villains did not spring full grown from the grass; only in the stories did they begin such things in the cradle and yet he well knew that family began to shape what circumstance would later make apparent. Families were also, as he knew even more intimately, often points of vulnerability.

"Likely very little," Hermione answered with affected ease, but for someone who'd once cornered him so effectively, it was obvious that it was a topic she'd rather not linger on. Which, of course, made him the more curious. "My mother-in-law would've had plenty to say about it, though. Not one to be lost for words was Molly Weasley. Of course, with so many children and grandchildren constantly about, underfoot, and making free use of trial Wheezes products, she was a hard woman to surprise." Nostalgia softened some of the hard lines about her eyes. But suspicion redrew them even more sharply. "What of it?"

He might be the one with a geas of truth laid on him, but this was the most unguarded he had yet seen her. He didn't know whether she was at last not clutching her memories so closely to her breast, as if sharing them with others might tarnish them, or if she had begun to trust him despite herself. Or if she simply no longer thought him a threat.

Loki preferred to think the solitude and the dark had put her in a sharing mood, rather than that. He'd given thought to pretending to be a tamed pet to gain her confidence, but he found in this new mood of truthfulness even with himself that he preferred her to think him dangerous rather than impotent. Trust was far easier to gain from Hermione Granger than respect, odd as it seemed. She trusted Thor to be a fool, Loki to serve his own ends, and Harry Potter with her life. But of the three, she respected only Harry.

And Odin. He wondered what strange bond those two were building, Odin giving her something that disturbingly resembled the privileges of a son. Frigga treating Harry in the same manner wasn't nearly as surprising. He himself was perfect evidence that taking in foundlings was a part of her nature.

"Curiosity is now a vice?"

"You've never been curious about my history before beyond what you needed in an attempt to verbally eviscerate me and this is an awfully odd setting to start in," she answered curtly.

"I'm in earnest on this. I want to know," Loki said, which was true enough for the geas. He swallowed down his motivation with only moderate difficulty. He'd always loved stories, before Silvertongue came to bear a wholly negative meaning. And the both of them represented a fascinating one. It was something foreign to the experience of a thousand years of life.

Hermione peered over at him and he painted the most heartfelt expression he could muster on his face. It took a long moment for her to come to some sort of decision. "I suppose it's only fair," she said slowly. "If I treat you only like an enemy, you'll hardly become an ally in times when the alliance is less than convenient for you. We've been telling you all this time how you ought to treat your family, but that would mean so much less from someone who'd enjoyed a perfect adolescence. Is that why you ignore Thor so desperately?"

"In part," Loki said with a grimace. "The other part is that I think he's an idiot with the emotional intelligence of Mjolnir."

That drew an unexpected smile from Hermione. "That's what I said about my husband while we were in school, you know, except that I compared his emotional intelligence to a teaspoon."

"And you went on to marry him?" Loki asked incredulously.

"People can grow up, eventually. Their innate natures don't really change, but they can wear some of the rough edges smooth. And you learn to love them despite their failings," Hermione replied.

"And what if I feel that Thor is all failings?"

"If that was the case, you wouldn't have called him 'brother' for a thousand years before you decided that you hated him more than you loved him."

"True. But your family?"

Hermione pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Before I tell you about my family, I think I should tell you about Harry's. It is and isn't my story to tell-but he'll never tell you the whole of it. You've known Harry long enough to grasp how extraordinarily good he is, haven't you?"

"Tediously so, though he's not entirely without fangs."

"Real goodness always has the strength to put into action the beliefs it espouses. The kind of 'good' that accepts everything universally isn't any kind of good at all. That's just fear of being unloved because you happen to have an opinion," Hermione said scornfully. "Regardless, part of the reason I can hear your history and scoff at your whinging that you're so badly done by your family when it seems to me you've been extraordinarily lucky in your adoptive parents is because of Harry."

"And I suppose this is the part where you reveal he was also adopted? I somehow doubt that he also discovered he was a member of a race that shares an ancient enmity with the family he thought he had."

"Harry wasn't adopted, no. His parents were killed. Murdered because of a prophecy," she said offhandedly, but her eyes had gone distant and one hand stroked at Skoll's thick pelt. "A prophecy that would change the rest of Harry's life. He was taken in by his aunt, though I suppose it might be more accurate to say that he was forced on them. They were Muggles, incapable of magic, but that wasn't what made them despicable people."

"Your parents adopted you and made you a prince; Harry's blood relatives locked him in a cupboard for eleven years with the spiders. When they found out he was capable of magic, there was a period where they put bars on the windows of the room he was in and fed him through a flap in the door. Everyone in the Wizarding world knew his name and his parents left him mounds of gold, but neither did a whit to change how they treated him. But Harry hardly spoke of it. He took it like it was his due and when all was said and done, he made peace with his aunt and cousin. It's that kind of strength that makes Harry far stronger than anyone else I know." Her voice had gone very soft and fond by the end, but it regained its edge when she refocused her attention on him.

"Your parents have always known you were a jotun, haven't they? They don't think of you as a monster any more than your brother does. You are the only one who thinks of yourself as a monster."

"And what would you know of it? Being a monster?" he asked snappishly. It was a weak response, but his mind was awhirl with the tale she'd relayed. He tried to imagine the oft glib dragon in the circumstances she'd described, but found it nigh impossible. But then he remembered the look he wore when he'd left Loki and Frigga at her loom, the quiet hunger that he hadn't understood at the time. Other details fell into place and suddenly, he could almost picture it. Not as the dragon he knows now, but as the man with the terrible hair and the steady eyes that he'd met on the airship. The bottle-green eyes that had never flinched, not in the face of rage or violence or an enemy with powers unknown. Because those eyes had already seen and overcome such things. He tried to imagine his own life, if he hadn't been taken in by Odin, had instead been entrusted to one of his own race and barely repressed a shudder.

Hermione grew very quiet, which was uncharacteristic of the woman who had a ready answer for any insult. "It's true that I've never tried to level cities in an attempt to declare myself dictator of the world," she said at last. "But...," she seemed to struggle to find words to express herself, which was more uncharacteristic yet.

She pulled her shoulders inward in a rare gesture of vulnerability. "My parents. They aren't like Harry and I either. They're normal humans, which means they're about as valuable and desirable as mud to purebloods. Mudblood. It's such a stupid, schoolboy sort of insult, but it's not so laughable when people are killing other people over it. I know exactly what it's like to be despised by a society that you loved and trusted. To be told that you're a kind of monster, a thief, a thing that has no right to exist. Your childhood began when all the great wars had come to an end, but my childhood was defined by one. My parents-I could have found them real protection, hid them away with some sympathetic magical family, but I always knew best."

There was a very set expression on her face that made it hard to read the emotions behind it. "I asked them, you know. "Do you trust me?" I asked it without flinching. I met my father's eyes, smiled as best I could at my mother, then I stole all their memories of me, erased myself from their lives as if I'd never existed and I painted false memories over what remained. I gave them new names and told them that their one goal in life had always been to live halfway across the planet. And they went. I'd never told them I could do that with my magic. I never told them anything about it, really. Never told them there was a war at all, let alone that I stood on the frontlines. I treated them like children. Like they were less than me, simply because they didn't have a place in my new world."

"I fought a war to stop the idiots who hated me for my blood and never once thought myself a hypocrite. Until I gave my parents their memory back. They called me a monster." A sad, wry smile pulled at her mouth. "They were right. My new world called me a hero for what I'd done, but my parents never trusted me again. I wasn't allowed to bring my magic into their house. I couldn't call them 'Mum' and 'Dad' any longer. I'd made them strangers through my choices and I died in that world like that. And I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Loki didn't quite know what to make of that confession. Because while she did it in the service of 'good', doubtlessly, neither Odin nor Frigga nor Thor had so much as hinted that he was a monster because of his birth, but they'd certainly thought his actions monstrous. Hermione Granger was the last person he'd expected to empathize with on that point, but if she told the truth and wasn't ensnaring him in some well-played game, her parents hadn't been as willing to forgive as his family was.

"If you'd already taken their memories, you could have lied," he pointed out. He suppressed a fresh shudder as he was once again struck by how horrifying her brand of magic was capable of being. To know such a thing existed and to have no part in it was almost enough for him to wish that they and Thanos would destroy each other and save all the rest of them from all their intentions, both good and ill.

"That wouldn't have made them my parents. It would have made them my puppets. Love is worthless when it isn't given freely." She glanced up at him suddenly. "Did you ever stop to consider it might have been for your sake?" she said accusingly.

"Pardon?"

"If they'd told you who your father was, could you have resisted the urge to see him? If he'd known you lived, if he known you'd become dear to Odin, it might have been enough for him to demand you back just to spite his old enemy. And if Odin refused, that would have been the start of another war."

"I..." had never, not for moment, considered it from that angle.

"And if Laufey did suspect you lived, perhaps that was why Odin was so insistent on the keeping of the treaty. To keep you off the front lines and safe from discovery. Not for his sake, but for yours. Because he knew that the discovery might destroy you."

"And he was right," Loki replied. "The son of Odin died that night." He couldn't quite keep the sorrow clear of his tone.

"If that's your choice."

"Don't you think that I have gone a little beyond the point of redemption?"

Hermione sighed. "I think it'd be a pity if you were. You're extraordinary in your own way, Loki. You really are. But I don't think that kind of conditional compliment will satisfy you."

"Somehow, I think your conditional compliments are rarer than the open praise of most."

Hermione's lips quirked, but her hand hadn't relaxed from where it was clenched in Skoll's fur. Loki realized that she was waiting on his judgment on her confession or perhaps an opinion on what she'd suggested concerning Odin's motives. "Well, some sacrifices must be made for the greater good, after all," he suggested lightly, feeling like it was the lesser evil. "Your parents were still alive to call you a monster and your war was won, was it not?"

Her expression darkened like the sky when Thor was calling down a storm. "The greater good?" she repeated slowly. A hard, bitter laugh spilled from her lips. "But it's as you say. We won and I was proven right in my judgment if my only object was saving their lives, so I was in service to the greater good as the victorious public saw it. I was just fool enough at the time to think that it would be less painful. That being right really mattered, when all I ever wanted afterwards was not to feel like I'd killed the parents who'd loved me with my own hands."

A/N: This dialogue-driven chapter turned out much longer than expected, so we're returning to Svartalfheim for the next installment as well.