London Sanctum, Present Time
"What a dreary-looking place." Loki looked up at the formidable, greystone building in front of him and said the first thing that came to his mind. The massive skylight bearing the symbol of the Eye of Agamotto stared down at him in all its daunting and provocative glory, as if barring him entry but daring him to take a step inside at the same time.
"How hideous."
"Your inner diva is showing, Loki."
"My dear, what utter ruin your disciples have turned this place into," he murmured under his breath, running his fingers across the lichen-spattered and moss-cracked slabs that made up the cobblestone wall feature.
"Did you say something?"
"Nothing," he quickly said.
Hands in his pockets, Loki took his time climbing up the steps to join Stephen who was waiting for him at the door, "For such a prime piece of real estate, you would do well to liven the place up a little bit."
"Yeah well, Sol Mara, the late Guardian of the Sanctum was better at this sort of thing than I am." Stephen waved a hand and the heavy oak doors parted soundlessly on their own volition. "The London Sanctum has changed hands many times since his death, no Master of the Mystic Arts ever stayed here very long."
"You mean since his murder."
Stephen looked at him strangely. "I don't believe I ever told you about how he died."
Loki returned his gaze. "You didn't. Doesn't mean I'm wrong."
Stephen was still looking at him suspiciously.
"It was just an educated guess, darling." He smiled serenely. "Dangerous business isn't it? Protecting the Sanctum?"
Stephen decided there was a time for mystery and a time for a plain old cup of tea. "Let's get you inside and out of the cold."
But Loki did not step inside immediately. He remained standing a few footsteps away from the threshold, his eyes fixed in the distant on something beyond the open doors.
"Loki?"
Loki's senses tingled as the mystical energies shrouding the sanctuary reached out to touch
It has been a while. Perhaps you have forgotten me?
"There is no need to worry, Loki." Stephen walked back out over the threshold toward him, drops of rain slanting in the wind dotting his shoulders.
"You're not on the watchlist anymore, remember? If the New York Sanctum thinks you're okay, so does London."
"They are not one and the same, Strange." Loki's eyes were fixed once more upon the Eye. "The state of my welcome is not up to you."
You do remember me, don't you, old friend?
The sentient magic of the Sanctum fleeted wildly back and forth from embracing him in nostalgic remembrance to waving him away in indifference, as if having found his seidr foreign and unfamiliar, which should not be the case at all.
The crushing wave of rejection had Loki reeling slightly, before it dawned on him just what the root cause of the Sanctum's hesitance might be. "Ah."
A hand left his coat pocket and came to rest lightly upon his abdomen.
You haven't been properly introduced.
"Loki, are you alright?"
The other hand too left his pocket, only to press his index finger against his lips.
"In a minute, Stephen."
The Sanctum reached out once more, and this time Loki allowed her to encroach upon his person, coaxing her to look deep…deeper until her omniscient gaze finally landed upon the magical being he was carrying inside him.
Recognise me.
His heart pounded as their unborn daughter reciprocated the gentle greetings with her unique blend of magic, the embodiment of the perfect marriage between his seidr and the Sorcerer Supreme's mystical energy.
Remember me.
and all of sudden, the invisible weights anchoring his feet down to the earth lifted.
"You done?" Somehow Stephen managed to hide his concern pretty well behind a façade of snarky nonchalance.
"Goodness." Loki cleared his throat. "So impatient," and took a step inside.
Loki sauntered around the massive Drawing Room, keeping his footfalls light so as not to stir the dust from the thick carpet underneath his feet.
"Nobody home?" His voice carried and echoed off the high walls despite the acoustic dampening of the heavy tapestries draped from the ceiling to the floor.
"No. We should have the place all to ourselves for a day or two." Stephen speedread through the Guardian's log, humming and aah-ing every so often whenever something caught his interest.
"Really?" Loki ran a hand along the exquisite stone finish of the mantelpiece. He grimaced when his fingers came away black.
"Yup." Stephen slammed the tome shut, sending clouds of dust billowing up into the air. "The current Guardian of the London Sanctum has been called upon to aid Master Minoru to neutralise a threat in Hong Kong."
"A threat?" Loki gingerly lowered himself onto a Chesterfield sofa, the quilted leather weathered yet pleasantly pliant, and he groaned in utter pleasure as he sank back on his haunches.
His back and feet were killing him. "Should you not be there?"
"They have managed without me so far. I am needed here to fortify the Sanctum and reinforce the wards around this part of the hemisphere, should Hong Kong fall and the threat shift its attention westward."
Stephen walked over to the windows. With a flick of his hand, the curtains parted, letting what little English sunshine left of the fast-receding daylight to seep through the bay windows.
"Why don't you rest for a while." Stephen studied him from a distance. "You look peaky."
"Don't mind if I do." Loki bundled his coat under his head and stretched his legs along the length of the Chesterfield, fully intent on taking a long, uninterrupted kip.
Not a minute must have passed before he opened his eyes again when he suddenly felt a cuff being wrapped around his upper arm. He groaned inwardly.
"Not that I don't appreciate your mother-henning, my love, but couldn't you have lost it somewhere over the Atlantic?"
"Had we flown in an actual aircraft to get here I could have. But alas, we didn't. So." Stephen gloated. "Suck it."
"But we're supposed to be on a vacation. Can we not take a rest from all this? I won't tell Christine if you don't."
"Fat chance."
"I'm not fat."
"No, you're not. You're gorgeous." Stephen kissed him on the lips quickly. "Now shut up."
"You're sexy when you're bossy." Loki licked his lips, and drowsed.
"Blood pressure's alright." Stephen winced at the sight of Loki's feet, once bony and slim, now painfully swollen up to the level of his shin. "Your feet hurting?"
"Like a bitch."
"You're sexy when you cuss."
"Sorry. I know I shouldn't." Loki held both hands to the sides of his belly.
"You trying to cover her ears?" Stephen had to smile.
"And getting her to calm down." Loki covered his mouth with the back of his hand to stifle a yawn. "She hasn't stopped squirming ever since we arrived."
Stephen's hand was suddenly on his belly, warm and heavy. "But you don't feel unwell? Headaches, blurring of vision, weird pains in your stomach?"
"What? Goodness, no, nothing of the sort. I feel fine." Loki made an irritable face as he rubbed his side again. "It's this place. She's…excited."
In his relief, Stephen allowed himself to smile. "You'll be okay here by yourself?"
"Of course. I'll make sure to shout loud enough to wake all the ghosts in this place if I need you."
"Yeah well, you know I'll come running." Stephen's knees creaked as he rose from his crouched position.
He winced as he attempted to shake the crepitus from his joints. "Or hobbling. God I'm getting old."
Loki's eyes opened slowly. "Strange."
"Hmm?"
"You can't."
"I'm sorry?"
"You can't do that."
"Huh?"
"You can't let me see you like that."
"What are you talking about?" Stephen laughed.
Loki did not answer, but the sudden, pasty whiteness of his face was telling enough.
"Loki, it's just my wonky knees!"
"You know it's not just your damn knees." To Stephen's utter horror, Loki's eyes began to fill.
"Hey." Looping his shin around the front leg of the armchair closest to him, Stephen dragged it forward across the floor carefully so as to not make any undesirable sound, bringing it in closer until his knees came into contact with the edge of the sofa.
"Loki, what's going on with you?"
"I told you to be careful." Loki leaned his head back, spilling long black hair off the armrest in a disarrayed tumble, his neck taut and stretched with strain.
"What are you saying?" Stephen thumbed away the wetness from the corner of one eye. "You've been acting weird ever since we got here."
"You were not supposed to leave me." The words were spoken in Loki's voice yet the nuances were strange and unfamiliar and Stephen felt his heart skip a beat.
Stephen frowned deeply. "Loki?"
Loki cocked his head sideways, his green eyes wide and confused. "What?"
"What was that?" Stephen's heart thundered in his chest, a sick feeling churning in his stomach.
Loki stared at him uncomprehendingly before the light returned to his glazed green eyes once more.
"It's nothing, Stephen." He gave a watery smile.
"It's just like you said, this place has…character. It seems to have somehow brought out the melancholy in me." He hurriedly added upon seeing the stricken look on Stephen's face, "But the good kind!"
"There's no such thing." Stephen was not easily fooled.
The three Sanctums were the most spiritually active places on earth, where high concentrations of mystical energies coalesced to form an impenetrable shield around the planet; lesser sorcerers had been overwhelmed by the sheer density of cosmic and elemental energies exuding from the very particles of air around them, the very earth at their feet – but surely a sorcerer of Loki's calibre would not succumb to disequilibrium so easily like so?
Or would he, in his somehow weakened, compromised state?
Had Stephen unknowingly put Loki and their unborn daughter in danger?
"Should I not have brought us here?" Stephen pressed. "Do you want me to take you elsewhere? A hotel, maybe?"
"There is no need, Stephen. I am fine." Loki closed his eyes once more, his face still wan and drawn. "Truly."
"There is something you are not telling me."
"Shh." Without opening his eyes, Loki interlaced his fingers through the hand still playing with his hair, and brought Stephen's knuckles to his lips. "Spoilers, darling."
"I hate it when you say that," Stephen said flatly. "Every time you say that, somehow one of us ends up crying or dying."
"I'll do my best to do neither." Loki clasped both hands over his belly and breathed in deeply. "If you promise to do the same."
Stephen may have said something in reply but Loki was no longer listening; the music no one else seemed to hear but him was simply too loud, and Loki had no choice but to sleep to drown it out.
When Loki awoke, the light of dusk streamed in through the windows, the daubs of red and amber glinting off the giltwood trumeau mirror in front of him like liquid fire and blood.
He bolted upright and the light blanket fell away from his chest. The air was heavy and still and smelled of mildew and lavender and death
and Loki suddenly remembered where he was.
He ran a hand down his chest and swept the blanket away. He frowned as he touched his fingers to his stomach, flat as a board – and definitely empty.
So he remembered the where.
but not the when.
Loki stood and walked over slowly to the mirror. A Loki from another time stared back at him, rail-thin and solemn, his black hair short and cropped close to the scalp, framing a face as pale as a ghost.
How much younger then? Or older?
Loki scrutinised his eyes. Despite the deceptively youthful face, his eyes appeared as he had always remembered them; centuries-old, promising mystery and hinting at an unfathomable well of secrets, eyes as green as the sea, capable of expressing the most profound love and the extremes of hate alike.
Who am I?
When am I?
As if on cue, the haunting notes of a Chinese violin drifted in through the door left slightly ajar like the call of a distant songbird and triangles, and his stomach fluttered.
He moved like the wind, trusting his keen sense of hearing to lead the way down the endless corridors toward the source of the music.
He knew not the wisdom of remaining lost in this dreamscape but he cared little for the way home, if answering the call of the siren meant laying eyes on his beloved once again –
"Mo ghràidh."
My love.
Long, tapered fingers pressed on the strings and the music stopped. The fiddle rested upon her knees.
"There you are." She looked up and smiled. "You took your time."
"I have been asleep," he murmured. "Were you waiting for me?"
"The one with the most time left does the waiting remember?" Tucking the long, vertical neck of the erhu against the crook of her own neck, she reached out a hand for Loki to take. He only hesitated for a fraction of a second, more out of fear that she would disappear upon physical contact.
When she did not vanish into thin air, Loki clutched her fingers tighter and pressed them to his cheek, relishing the warmth he had not expected to ever feel again.
"In your universe, you have waited long enough, Loki." She tipped her head, gesturing at the python-skin box in her lap. "In mine, I only had to keep playing."
"How are you still here?"
She fingered the outer corner of Loki's eye, marvelling at the absence of the laugh lines she had become so used to seeing. "I don't know. Perhaps I am one of the ghosts you were talking about?"
She leaned in closer until he could see the whites of her eyes, widened and almost teasing. "Or perhaps this conversation has already happened and you are only just remembering it."
No. He would have remembered if it had…he would not have forgotten. Not her.
"The Sanctum."
"She is a living thing." She fussed with the sleeve of her robe that had somehow gotten entangled with the horse hair keeping the two strings together.
"As I kept trying to tell him."
"She let you in, did she not?"
"She had every intention to bring you to me." She frowned. "Or I to you."
She shook her head. "It can get confusing."
"Did you suffer?"
"At the time I must have." She shrugged her thin, bony shoulders. "But I do not remember it now. Not the pain, no. But what I remembered was the element of surprise, and how surprised I was at myself for being surprised by it."
"I have told your Stephen Strange such. One can never be ready for it." Loki frowned at the mention of that name. The proverbial bell was ringing madly in his ear but his mind's eye came up empty.
"I was not ready when the end came for me."
He had been lost, lost to himself, his family, his home, he would have crawled out of the Void on his hands and knees to get to her, had he only known…
The timing of it all sucked, and the hollow of her demise left a gaping abyss in the pit of his stomach he never bothered to fill for he knew he never could. "I was not there for you when it did."
"Oh Loki." Her lips were cold as they brushed against the deep furrows of grief between his eyes. "You were there when I began."
"Do you remember it now? Our past life together?" Loki implored, for yes, yes he had waited. He had waited so long for her to discover who he was, beyond Loki, beyond the God of Mischief who played mind games and parlour tricks, beyond the nameless God who parlayed villages into kingdoms and kingdoms into desolate fields of war and death.
"Who you were? Who I was?"
"I knew who you were right from the beginning, my lord." She kissed him gently on the lips, the first kiss this version of her ever deigned to give despite the centuries they spent slipping in and out of each other's timeline. "You were my greatest love."
But when she reopened her eyes, to his devastation, they were empty and devoid of tenderness.
Perhaps her reincarnation retained not only her memories, but his sins…perhaps she had never forgiven him for what he had done, and never would.
"You need to go. He is calling."
He could not hear anything. "Who is?"
As if on cue
"Loki."
She rose to her feet, towering over him in her resplendent, golden-yellow robes. "You belong to another now."
Loki could not speak for the icy chill that slithered down his spine. He climbed to his feet.
Her hands snaked out fast and wrapped around his upper arms, tight and firm. Yet her voice was soft. "You need to remember."
"Loki."
She reached down and touched his stomach gently. "She needs you to remember."
"Loki!"
"Now," and her other hand suddenly slammed into his forehead. "Awake!"
When Loki came to, he was kneeling on the floor, his forehead pressed against a cool surface. He could feel his consciousness wavering in and out of form, the pull of the dreamscape relentless and strong.
Yet the damaged hands holding him up were strong too. They shook terribly though.
"Stephen," he murmured.
"Loki." He could feel his husband sag against him in relief, his body warm and heavy and grounding. "What the hell happened? How did you get up here?"
Loki's eyes were still too heavy so he kept them closed. He did not need to see, only to feel, and his heart was comforted to feel her once more, stirring deep within him. He clasped both hands to his stomach and shuddered in utter relief.
Stephen shook his shoulder gently. "Loki, open your eyes and look at me."
Loki obeyed.
"Where am I?"
"You're in the Relic Room." Stephen sounded relieved yet strangely confounded. He had returned to the Drawing Room after completing his tasks only to find Loki missing. "You were not supposed to be able to enter."
A very white hand came to rest upon the protective glass casing.
"Loki, are you alright?" The trance he had found Loki in was so deep Stephen feared he was never going to pull him out. "You had me worried. You were barely breathing."
Loki did not answer. All he could do was stare at the antique musical instrument encased in the glass, at the glistening box made of the finest red sandalwood, the finely entwined silk threads of the strings, the sleek bamboo bow resting against the stand – he could make out the thick layer of dust coating the violin, and his heart plummeted.
"That's an erhu. It belonged to the Ancient One." Apparently, Stephen was still not convinced he could sit up unsupported, judging by the arm he had wrapped around Loki's waist. "Dating back to the Qing Dynasty, the curator said."
"Ming, actually." A sick whisper.
"What?" Stephen knew he had heard Loki correctly...or had he?
"I gave it to her." Exhausted, Loki pressed his forehead once more against the cool, cool glass.
The hand that had been gently stroking his stomach stilled. "You didn't."
Loki had to smile. Oh Stephen.
"You couldn't have." Stephen sounded faint.
Remember.
His daughter shifted violently inside him and his stomach suddenly twisted in pain. Loki grunted and wrapped his own arm around the one circling his waist.
"Loki?"
"I need you to take me somewhere."
"Anywhere." As long as it was away from here, Stephen knew it was a mistake now to bring Loki here. "Where? Back to Asgard?" he frowned at the beads of sweat dotting Loki's forehead, "The hospital?"
Loki climbed slowly to his feet, using the glass encasement as a form of support. He shook his head, his eyes still clouded with the strain of trying to remember…it was coming back in bits and pieces, some in vivid multicolour, some a washed-out grey.
With one hand on his belly, Loki groped for his way out of the Forbidden Room; he could feel the wards all over the door, it should not have allowed anyone other than a Master of the Mystic Arts to enter – how did he get in in the first place? – he continued to walk unsteadily down the corridor, with Stephen trailing close behind.
The Sorcerer Supreme wanted nothing more than to protest, to cajole Loki back to the safety of one of the bedrooms to rest, but something in him held him back.
This had gone beyond his depth of understanding, and he could not for the life of him, stop himself from watching it unfold. Perhaps deep down he already knew.
Loki was no stranger to the Sanctum from the way he manoeuvred the corridors, the many twists and turns, the hidden passageways. Loki had been here before.
And true enough, they stopped in front of a set of double doors, heavy and imposing, made of a mix of teak and mahogany, its handles burnished gold.
The doors opened slowly on their own; either Loki had used the power of his mind or the Sanctum was as sentient as just about every strange thing kept in this house, Stephen could not be sure.
But it sure was fascinating as hell.
The three Permanent Portals stared back at them, each one offering a different landscape, a different promise of adventure.
The very far right promised the Eikando Zenrinji of Autumn Leaves in the ancient town of Kyoto (why couldn't he have brought Loki there? It was breath-takingly beautiful)
The very far left was the bustling pedestrian walk of Las Ramblas. Barcelona. Which would not have been a bad second choice. Loki would have enjoyed the energy of the city, the tapas, the architecture. He would have said something crazy like how he was actually a muse for Gaudi or something and Stephen would have laughed it off as one of his tall tales, despite actually believing it, reluctantly, of course.
But the portal in the middle was what had caught Loki's eye. With snow covering the top of the mountains and the residual green and yellow of summer still ferning the lower highlands, it was a barren and desolate landscape, with its brooding peaks and a very narrow, treacherous, death-trap of a valley.
It was too stark and cruel to be called beautiful, yet too majestic and spectacular to call her anything but.
It was a place of death.
A place of crossed paths, and intertwined destinies.
Glencoe.
A pale hand pointed, steady and unwavering. "There."