Chapter 23: Unpleasant Truths:
A frustrated sigh broke the awkward silence the room had fallen into. Stephen pulled a chair forward and sat in front of his master, though his attention was solely turned elsewhere. His brow knitted into a contemplative frown, Stephen worked his jaw absentmindedly as he quietly observed Loki. His efforts to decipher whatever could possibly be going through the latter's mind had so far turned out to be vain. The SilverTongue had remained surprisingly silent still since the Ancient One had thrown this mind-blowing revelation upon them. Unlike him Loki knew plenty on the supposedly still alive Sorcerer and though Stephen had at first wrongly assumed that Loki would be rather pleased by this new turn of events, his grim expression and stiff figure were indicative of the contrary. Whatever conclusion Loki had come to, it didn't seem to play in their favor.
"For how long have you known?" Loki finally asked in a commanding and firm voice. "Why is it relevant now?" he wondered as he tried his best to wrap his mind around this new, almost too absurd to be true information.
"I've always held some doubts concerning the finality of Allice's death and, until very recently, believe me, that's all it was. Unfortunately, these doubts were confirmed when I least expected it. Allice is quite good at faking his own death." the Sorceress Supreme admitted honestly, pursing her lips unwittingly. 'He did a rather good job at hiding himself from me, Heimdall, Frigga and Odin.' she thought to herself bitterly.
"You're both talking about the guy who created Mikan's magical kind. Right?" frowned Stephen as he waited for a confirmation that never came. "Mikan told me he was killed by Thanos."
Loki glanced up at him with narrowed eyes before answering his questions with a simple nod of his head. "He was, indeed. And I am more than curious to learn what your master knows about this and why she chose to keep it to herself too.", he declared as his piercing glare returned on the bald Sorceress Supreme, following every gesture, studying every subtle expression she manifested. He read shame and self-blame in her eyes. In them, there was also a slight hint of sadness which he, surprisingly, had previously failed to notice.
"We are all ears." Stephen agreed, gesturing to the Ancient One to initiate the explanations. "And what is Mikan supposed to find on Asgard anyway?" he inquired with apprehension.
"The truth about her connection with Allice."
All colors drained from their faces, neither Loki nor Stephen tried to hide their indignation.
"Couldn't you have told her by yourself? She stands no chance against him." Loki protested, outraged.
"And neither do I, nor you for the matter, Loki. At least not now." the Ancient One pointed out softly. "I couldn't take the risk of pressuring him into acting sooner. But I knew that he wouldn't dare to hurt her in Asgardian territory."
Loki staggered under the blow. This could only mean one thing: either Odin, Frigga or both had somehow figured Mikan's connection with Allice out and they had decided to act on it. Loki felt his throat tighten at the sole idea. And suddenly a laugh threatened to bubble out of him at the absurdity of the Sorceress's assumptions. Bitterly, Loki swallowed it to a mere scoff.
"Odin is a pragmatic thinker. He will choose the simplest solutions to achieve his ends. And, in this case, killing Mikan would be both in his and Asgard's best interests." he reasoned coolly, though his clenched fists betrayed his growing anger. The Ancient One opened her mouth, looking ready to protest, but Loki shook his head. "Because of you, Mikan is now in greater danger than the one she was already facing." he growled accusingly at the Ancient One.
"No. She isn't. Heimdall and Frigga won't allow such thing to happen. But more importantly, Odin wouldn't dare to risk angering Death more than he already has." the Ancient One replied calmly.
Once again, a strained silence fell upon the room. Unwittingly, Loki's body went stiff again as he processed the information the Sorceress had so serenely bombarded them with. As far as he was concerned, he couldn't recall any mentions of Odin being at odds with the Cosmic Entity. 'Norns! What in Helheim is this senile old woman even talking about?' Meanwhile, Stephen massaged his temples, preparing himself for the headache coming. 'Say what now?' he wondered as he finally held out his hand in incomprehension.
"Why would Odin even feel the need to kill Mikan in the first place? She's more a threat to herself than to others. Heimdall must have already realized that, if he truly keeps a tab on everything going on in the Universe. And what does one of the Cosmic Entities have to do with all of this anyway?"
Ignoring Stephen's questions, Loki leaned menacingly over the Sorceress' figure. The skin next to his eyes tightened as he glowered at her in a low, guttural voice: "Speak, Sorceress Supreme, tell us all you know and spare us no detail. Lie to me again and I swear to you by the Nines that I will rip your tongue out with my bare hands."
Unfazed by Loki's threat, which she held no doubt over its genuinity, the Sorceress sighed heavily as she motioned him to take a sit next to Stephen. If anything, it only irked Loki even more, yet he still obliged nonetheless. His rigid jaw and thinnest mouth told her he was in no way pleased with the situation. Their eyes locked and Loki fixed her a lancing stare. 'I suppose that I brought it on myself.' The Ancient One sighed inwardly, though she would never admit to it out loud. 'As long as they buy it, then that's all what matters. I am sorry Mikan.'
"I will tell you everything. But firstly, I need you two to know that I have played a much bigger part in Mikan's journey than she realizes." The Ancient One finally confessed. "I first met her ten years ago. She had been sent here to retrieve the Book of Cagliostro and the Eye of Agamotto. Such attempts, mainly orchestrated by Hydra or Kaecilius, weren't uncommon. I didn't read too much into it. Especially since it seemed obvious that Mikan wasn't the master of her own doings. I wrongly assumed that she had been sent by the Alice Academy, therefore I chose not to interfere. I only loosened the chains bounding her mind and hoped it would give her an opportunity to free herself on her own. Taking a look back upon the past course of events, we all know that this didn't happen before another two painfully long years." The Ancient One admitted before adding faintly "To this day I still wish I'd freed her sooner."
Stephen bit his lip. After all the suffering Mikan had gone through, her chances of enjoying a life like any youngster of her age had forever been ripped away from her. His heart ached at the idea it all could have all ended sooner. 'Ten years ago, she still hadn't had to kill her childhood friend. She was still conscious back then. Ten years ago, she still hadn't gone through that.' Stephen contemplated sadly.
"Our path crossed again two years later. The explosion that freed her from her detainers contained unprecedented amounts of gamma radiation. It didn't go unnoticed neither by me, nor by S.H.I.E.L.D. Master Hamir and I arrived there first and I recognized Mikan. We decided to take her to a place where her safety wouldn't be threatened by S.H.E.L.D's interference. Looking back at the situation with the knowledge I have now, it seems obvious that, contrary to Mikan's beliefs, the explosion didn't occur because her detainers kept pushing her body to its limits. It happened because the Soul Stone acted on her subconscious desire to be set free." She paused to make the two men sign not to interrupt her. Under their careful attention she continued. "Somehow, a powerful spell placed on her allowed this to happen, although I am not certain that it was meant to work that way. But I guess there's nothing too surprising about that. Mikan never acts according to any plans after all." the Ancient One remarked, "She always does complicated."
Stephen scoffed at his master's last comment and the ghost of a smirk curved Loki's lips. They could each easily testify by their respective experiences with the young woman that it couldn't have described her any better. 'One shall never make the mistake of underestimating Mikan.' All three had learned the lesson. For most, it had been the hard way.
"Well," the Ancient One resumed, "At least, taking care of her was. Mikan woke up with a complete lack of control over her new acquired powers, especially the Mind-Reading, the Corrosion and the Teleportation Alices. These three caused us the most trouble and Mikan's constant delirious state wasn't of any help either. She kept hearing voices no matter how far away from the cities we went. She was in constant physical pain and she suffered several mental breakdowns. She even attempted to kill herself once. She was a ticking time bomb awaiting to explode and represented a threat as much to herself than to others. It took us almost two full years to realize that the problem wasn't coming from her but from me."
Stephen's eyes widened, comprehension dawning on his face. He shot a brief look at Loki who seemed to have come to the same conclusion.
"This was the aftermath of the two spells combined." Stephen stated.
"And the voices she was hearing weren't coming from the outsider world but from the inside." Loki completed gravely. 'They emanated from the Soul Stone.' he added to himself. 'Does this mean that the myths behind its pocket Dimension are true? Has Mikan been able to access it? Even unconsciously? Then, if my guess is true, how much influence does he still have over her?'
The Ancient One nodded. "Indeed, and they disappeared the instant I reversed them."
Suddenly, bribes of the conversation he had with Mikan on the rooftop of Allice's Mansion came back to him. Loki frowned as Mikan's soft voice echoed back into his head. 'The last attempt dates from eight or seven years ago; as I said, those two years were a complete blur, I remember them barely. […] Four years ago. It was a bit of a coincidence, really. I just happened to be looking out for information on Alices in Nepal when I met Master Hamir there.'
"If everything was going so smoothly then why did you feel the need to erase her memories?" Loki briskly pointed out.
The Ancient One's slight flinch didn't go unnoticed by neither men, who stared at her intently. Taken aback by his master's reaction, Stephen let himself sink further down on his chair. Sighing heavily, he bent over at the waist, elbows on his knees and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was aware of the Sorceress's affection for Mikan towards whom she felt particularly protective. However even he couldn't look past the hypocrisy of the Ancient One's actions. 'If Loki's accusation is true, then she's only stolen Mikan's memories of the two years following her liberation from Kuonji's hold. If she could take those away then why didn't she take it all of them then? Mikan has been through so much worse already. By doing this she isn't protecting her but only breaking her trust.' Stephen, reflected gloomily 'Unless those memories might disclose something, something she truly doesn't want Mikan to know. But if such a thing is true… Then how bad could it be?'
"Back then, I was still ignorant of the horrors Mikan had been through and I hadn't yet realized about her connection with the Soul Stone." The Ancient stated almost defensively. "Mikan was getting better at mastering her Alices and ever since I reversed the spells, she grew progressively more and more apt to take care of herself on her own. She became entirely lucid too and my help wasn't needed anymore. This is why I asked Xenophilius Lovegood to retrieve her memories of these two years. I genuinely believed that I was sparing her from a harsh, unnecessary pain." the Ancient One argued faintly before materializing a shallow stone in the center of the room. It was carved with strange runes and elaborately decorated with precious stones. Within its hollow was contained a cloudy, silvery substance that appeared to be neither gas nor liquid. Loki raised a curious eyebrow, more impressed with the complexity of the enchantments the artefact was carrying than he would care to admit.
Simultaneously standing up, Loki and Stephen gathered around the basin in which they could see thick glistening strands of the same strange silvery-white of the substance they were swirling in. To their surprise, an image of a much younger Mikan was swimming around the surface of the bowl.
"This is a Pensieve, a clever invention of the Wizarding World. It contains Mikan's stolen memories, which include the one episode of delirium which cost Master Hamir his missing hand, the one time she killed all living beings within a mile radius of her during one of her Corrosion Alice outbursts. Or how she consciously burned beyond recognition all her detainers in a fit of madness after she finally woke up. And much more that happened during the course of these two years. Nothing that she needed to know; it would just have made her feel unnecessarily miserable. Or, so I thought at the time." the Ancient One explained to the two Sorcerers, carefully impermeable to their judging stares. "Only Xenophilius knew of what her memories enclosed and, unwilling to invade her privacy more than I already had, I asked him not to disclose their content to anyone, including myself."
"But you looked at them anyway, didn't you?" Stephen guessed, his voice was hard and his tone sounded more blaming than he had intended for it to be.
"I did." the Ancient One admitted in a bare whisper. She suddenly sounded concerningly wearier and more exhausted than Stephen had ever heard her before. "Since the instant I first met Mikan I perceived a singular duality in her Magic. Almost too subtle to notice. When I learned about the two fragments of the Soul Stone linked to her own, I blamed it on that. And, since it grew stronger after she acquired the one inside the Infinity Gauntlet, I simply assumed that my first guess had been right. But when I performed the rituals to complete the oath you three took, I realized that it was more than just that. Because this particular stretch of Magic, which isn't her own, resisted the magical bounding of the ritual and refused to comply to the Oath. Since I couldn't find any plausible explanation to justify what happened, I decided to screen her retrieved memories in the hopes to find one."
'And she obviously did.' Stephen kept himself from pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. 'How great of a threat must Allice be to instore this much apprehension in her? Loki seems to dread what he could do to Mikan too.'
Speaking of the devil, Stephen turned his attention back to Loki, slightly surprised to notice that the Asgardian Sorcerer hadn't torn his eyes away from the basin even once. He kept staring at it intently as if though searching for something in particular within its depths. When the insight of a certain memory seemed to have finally caught his attention back, Loki gripped the edge of the Pensieve and leaned down slowly for a closer look. He stilled when his nose made contact with the odd substance, his eyes widened and he raised himself up almost immediately. An undecipherable, intense expression crossed Loki's face. Stephen was struck by the realization it was one of pure shock and raw incomprehension. Any other given day, he would have highly enjoyed the priceless look of muted surprise on Loki's face, but not this day. If anything, an unexpected, unwelcomed, gut-wrenching feeling of fear overwhelmed him as he wondered what terrifying truth hid behind it.
Recovering from his shock, Loki finally swore: "By the Nines! How in the sweet name of Valhalla did Mikan end up in Niflheim?!"
"My queen, I am concerned for her welfare: the spell you cast on her is way too strong. It will drain her of every single remaining drop of magical energy she owns." Heimdall voiced his worries to Frigga.
"I know, old friend. However, on the basis of the information you shared with me, I have a strong faith in my plan." affirmed confidently Frigga even though Heimdall caught a worrying glimpse of hesitation in his queen's eyes.
"In the short period of time your son has spent with Lady Sakura, he seems to have gotten slightly attached to her. If anything wrong happens to her, you will not be forgiven easily." Heimdall warned her.
"This is exactly the reason why my plan must not fail, Heimdall. Do not worry dear friend, I will not allow any harm to be done to her."
"My queen, I am concerned for her welfare: the spell you cast on her is way too strong. It will drain her of every single remaining drop of magical energy she owns." Heimdall voiced his worries to Frigga.
"I know, old friend. However, on the basis of the information you shared with me, I have a strong faith in my plan." affirmed confidently Frigga even though Heimdall caught a worrying glimpse of hesitation in his queen's eyes.
"In the short period of time your son has spent with Lady Sakura, he seems to have gotten slightly attached to her. If anything wrong happens to her, you will not be forgiven easily." Heimdall warned her.
"This is exactly the reason why my plan must not fail, Heimdall. Do not worry dear friend, I will not allow any harm to be done to her."
A feeling of frustration, deception and disillusionment overtook Hotaru as she briskly walked away from Thor's chambers. This had been the last straw! Working on putting all this negative energy into keeping her poker face straight, she decided to personally take the matter in hands. 'One is never better served than by himself.' If she had quickly pierced through Mikan's illusion, it was only a matter of time before an expert Sorceress like Frigga would too. 'I have to bring reason back into this idiot's head. She's been fleeing from us for way too long! I won't let her keep avoiding us forever; if she refuses to face me, I'll be the one to come for her!'
The young woman hastily crossed the golden halls of the Asgardian Palace, marching nearly flush to the wall as she tried to avoid bumping into anyone she knew. Especially Luca. With the Royal Family's trust on her side, her rushed entrance in the stables aroused no suspicions. A cheerful stable boy even approached her.
"How can I serve you, Lady?" he asked politely.
"I need a horse. One that is fast and docile." Hotaru succinctly requested.
The stable boy nodded obediently as he silently led her to the box of beautiful dark horse whose black coat was pierced by a graceful white line on his face which ended just above his muzzle.
"I think this one will suit you the best, Milady." the blond man recommended her as he gently patted the horse head whose clever eyes calmly observed Hotaru. Smiling to the latter's confusion the stable boy added: "Darksilver is quite the smart boy. I believe that's one of the reasons why he was Prince Loki's favorite. Once you earn his respect, he'll become your most faithful companion."
The young woman raised a surprised eyebrow at the precision yet her violet eyes quietly studied the intelligent creature's dark orbs in which she deciphered a subtle but nevertheless present mischievous glint. She smirked slightly to him as she exchanged a conniving glance with the clever mount. Finally, Darksilver leaned his head down to Hotaru's reach. A small smile curved her lips as she caressed gently his mane and patted his head playfully.
"Should I help you prepare him or do you prefer to start getting acquainted to Darksilver by yourself, Milady?"
"I can take it from here, thank you." Hotaru politely dismissed the stable boy. The latter bowed his head and walked away.
Entering the box, Hotaru let its door open as she continued to caress gently Darksilver. Approaching him from the left side, her eyes screened for the equestrian equipment.
Once done, the inventor admired her work as she started to wonder on how to safely mount the impressively tall equine. Problem that Darksilver was prompt to solve as the horse kneeled down to Hotaru's height.
"Clever boy." Hotaru smiled satisfied and petted him under the snout in recognition.
Grasping the reins with her left hand, Hotaru positioned her left foot in the left stirrup and grabbed the saddle horn with her hand. She then jumped up slightly to raise herself onto the horse and swung her right leg around Darksilver's body. Her two feet secure in the stirrups and the reins in both hands, she lowered herself slowly into the saddle as Darksilver bounced back to his full height. Rubbing him gently on the sides, she squeezed them with her legs. Darksilver trotted out of the stables and guided her to the gates where two familiar warriors were waiting for her. Pulling the reins to make a sign to Darksilver to halt in front of them, Hotaru silently greeted the two men with a slight bow of her head.
"Lady Hotaru, isn't it too late for a horse ride?" Fandral accosted her.
"I doubt it is, Fandral. The sun is still high in the sky." Hotaru retorted.
"You do barely know Asgard and some of its regions can be dangerous even for Asgardians. Perhaps we should guide you." Volstagg proposed.
"I thank you for this thoughtful proposition but such measures won't be necessary. I will not venture further town and I already am in a trustworthy company." Hotaru politely countered.
As the two men finally took notice of which mount, she was riding, Darksilver had already galloped far away, bringing Hotaru to the borders of the Asgardian forest.
Pulling out of her purse a map of Asgard and scanned it with her phone. Then, she opened the app which was monitoring the signal of the device she used to track Mikan to match her location with one existent in the map. It took a few minutes but, eventually, an orange dot appeared on it, located deep within the Asgardian mountains.
'Gotcha! I won't let you run away from me anymore!' Hotaru smirked as she carefully guided and allowed herself to be guided by Darksilver through the forest.
A.N: Thank you for reading this chapter! Constructive criticism is always welcome, please leave a review!