Glencoe, Scotland. Present Time
So much for no mountain climbing, was Stephen's first numb thought upon stepping out of the Portal and finding himself greeted by a frigid blast of cold mountain air.
"Loki, please tell me you're alright," he begged. "All the more important if you're actually not."
"This is not the kind of ailment you can fix, Strange." As if on cue, Loki doubled over and would have fallen to his knees had Stephen not caught him. True enough, as Stephen's hand searched Loki's midsection for the source of pain, it came upon a hard, tense abdomen.
"How long have you been having contractions, Loki?" Stephen's heart pounded wildly in his chest.
Loki did not answer.
So. Stephen's second, even more numbing thought was that Loki was having premature contractions, right here in the wilderness, smack in the middle of nowhere with not so much as an oxygen tank.
It was a nightmare right out of Man VS Wild, as Wong would probably say whenever he felt like being helpful.
After a few long seconds, Loki finally straightened, his breaths ragged. "We haven't got much time."
"Time for what exactly?"
"Time to remember." Loki began to climb. "If you want to save our daughter, we need to hurry."
Stephen's internal clock told them they had only climbed for ten minutes at most before Loki finally stopped, but to him it felt like hours. They were now standing on a precarious ridge overlooking the valley; just a footstep out of turn and they would plummet some three hundred feet into the ravine below.
"Do you see it, Stephen?" Loki's face had gone grey with pain.
He wanted nothing more than teleport them both back to New York, to Christine. He swept his eyes across the barren landscape, seeing nothing but rolling hills and the long, tortuous narrow valley below.
"See what, Loki?" Stephen shook his head in helpless frustration.
Loki hissed, "Open your eyes!" A hand suddenly slammed into his forehead.
Stephen's eyes flew open. The sky above them was now pitch black.
And the hills around them were burning.
Smoke and soot assaulted his airways and Stephen choked back a cough, his eyes instantly watering. He could barely see Loki standing beside him for all the smoke.
"Where are we?" he gasped.
After a beat, he caught himself. "When are we?"
"We are now standing on the Battlefields of Glencoe, in the wee hours of the morning of a deep winter's night. It is February the twelfth, and the year is 1692." Loki said calmly.
"Did you take us back in time?"
"Of course not," Loki scoffed. "What you are seeing…are my memories."
Bewildered, Stephen turned to look at him, and did a double take.
A Loki from another time stared back at him; very young, hair short and slicked back to expose a high forehead and the sharp cut of his cheekbones. Dressed all in black, he was rail-thin, and nearly as tall as the Loki Stephen had come to know.
Without thinking, Stephen reached out to touch, and his fingers palmed a very flat stomach where his daughter was supposed to be.
"You are in my head, Stephen. What you see, and what you hear is real, and at the same time, not."
Screams suddenly pierced through the silence of the night, distant yet painfully close.
Stephen's head whipped around and looked on in horror as he saw men, women, and children, all barefoot and clad in nothing but the sleeping clothes on their backs, clamber up the sides of the mountain into the heavy snow. Their houses burnt, nothing more than little dots of fire along the narrow, snowed-in valley.
He looked in the distance at the river that could have doused the flames. It was frozen solid. "What am I looking at? Arson?"
Loki shook his head slowly.
"You are looking at a Massacre." Flames danced in his eyes. "Some are already dead in their home, throats slit while they slept."
"What happened here?" Stephen could not take his eyes away. In the distant he could make the glint of metal against metal as swords clashed, and the fiery sparks of muskets firing into the inky blackness of the night.
"It was a time of conflict between the supporters of King William III of England, and the Jacobites who rallied behind the French-backed House of Stuart as the rightful heir to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland."
"Two weeks ago, the King offered a Royal Pardon for the remaining Scottish clans yet to swear allegiance to him, promising severe retribution against those who would not."
A blood-curdling scream shattered the air as a musket round found its target. Loki watched with unblinking eyes.
"It was a terrible winter and for days on end, the MacIains of Glencoe had been snowed in, right here in this very narrow valley. In the end, their Chief was delayed in taking the Oath by a day."
Loki breathed out slowly. "Only a day, and they were slaughtered anyway to set an example."
"Those who did not die from the swing of a sword died out here." Loki tipped his head left to right. "Froze to death in the snow."
"And you came here because?" Stephen's forehead wrinkled.
"I wanted to watch," Loki said simply.
"So what was your name then, at this time and place?"
"Loki."
"This Loki?" Stephen looked him up and down, and Loki knew Stephen did not mean the way he looked.
A beat, "Yes."
The sound of faint sobbing caught his attention. Stephen squinted as he struggled to make out shapes and shadows, the whiteout making it difficult to see beyond fifty yards in front of them. Despite sensing the cries becoming closer, they became quieter, as if someone was trying to stifle them, for fear of being heard.
Then Stephen caught sight of her.
Some twenty yards away, he saw a young maiden, dressed only in her nightgown, climb over the treacherous rocks, her hands and feet bare, with three English soldiers hard on her heels.
Stephen glimpsed her face, pale and frightened, her hair a burnished red, as red as the fire of the burning torches the soldiers wielded high above her head as one of them managed to grab her ankle and she fell facedown onto the snow.
Her scream of terror shattered the night air, and at the sound of her voice, Stephen's heart skipped.
"Is that –" His breath caught in his throat. "That's her, isn't it."
He blanched. "The Ancient One."
"Not very ancient yet, as you can see." Loki's eyes had gone soft. "Barely fifteen. Fourteen if you're feeling pedantic."
The young girl whimpered as one of the soldiers ripped the gown clean off her back, revealing a bony white shoulder. He flipped her over roughly, and the wind carried the cracking sound her head made as it slammed against a snow-covered rock.
The soldier held a bayonet high over his head, its razor-sharp tip glinting in the dark.
"No," Stephen whispered in horror, taking an involuntary step forward, despite knowing he could not, should not interfere –
And a blast of seidr seared his cheek as it barrelled past his face, and slammed into the soldier's chest, sending him tumbling down into the ravine behind him.
"Loki, what are you doing?"
"Hush, Strange." And Loki swept past him, swift as the wind, his daggers glinting in his hands.
In a matter of seconds, he had dispatched of the remaining two soldiers, their blood black and thick as it seeped into the snow, spurting from the matching gashes across their throats.
His heart pounding, Stephen was about to run over to where Loki had crouched over the girl when Loki held out a hand, halting him in his tracks.
"That's far enough. Do not let her see you."
And Loki began to speak.
The language Loki spoke was not English but somehow Stephen could understand every word of it. It was the Allspeak, he realised. He was listening to the conversation as Loki would have heard it that night.
"Thank you, good S-Sir," she stammered, both from sheer terror and the cold alike. She wrapped whatever was left of her tattered nightgown around herself to preserve what modesty she had left, and shivered violently.
"What is your name?" Loki asked softly. She could not speak for the uncontrollable chattering of her teeth.
Loki conjured a thick blanket from thin air and was about to wrap it around her when he gasped suddenly, dropping from kneeling on one knee down onto all fours.
Out the corner of his eye, he could see Stephen taking a step forward.
"Stephen, don't! The timeline –"
Loki let out a long, painful moan.
The girl leaped forward to grab his shoulders to keep him from slumping to the ground. "Sir, are you alright?"
Upon physical contact, she froze.
Loki could feel his seidr stirring lazily under her hands that remained clasped to his shoulders, but something in her eyes changed. "I know you."
She searched his face, her pale blue eyes wide and unblinking. "I have seen you in my dreams."
Loki gritted his teeth against the pain wracking his abdomen. "Tell me your name," he repeated his question breathlessly, the urgency in his voice unmistakable.
She sounded almost puzzled. "You know my name."
"Say it," he pleaded. "Say it anyway. Please."
Seeing the desperation in his eyes, she allowed her hands to fall away from his shoulders, only to wrap her arms around Loki's neck as she helped him upright, her red hair tumbling down her bare back, scraped and bloodied from the rocks.
She pressed her lips to his temple, and whispered in his ear.
It was the magic of her name that he needed, and upon receiving it, Loki's eyes suddenly glowed a brilliant golden yellow.
Waves of seidr began to emanate from their huddled forms, his green, hers the familiar golden of mystical energy Stephen had always associated with his own; all of sudden they merged into a blinding sphere of white, so bright and sudden Stephen hissed, rearing his head and shielding his eyes with his forearm
As Stephen's arm fell away from his face, he found himself standing once more on the barren hill, but it was covered by snow no longer, for it had melted some three hundred and fifty years ago.
The sun hung low, and the clouds lower, casting great shadows over the bens around them. He braved a step forward and peered over the edge.
Where just a few seconds ago houses had stood fast burning into cinders in the dead of night, now in their place were desolate barren highlands, quiet and still. Yet Stephen could still hear the screams echoing in his head, louder if he closed his eyes. He kept them open.
He had walked in Loki's dreams before, but never memories. He did not know if he ever wanted to do it again.
And from the look on Loki's ashen face, he doubted Loki would ever want to do it again either. At least, the colour of his eyes had returned to his usual green.
Stephen slowly sank to the ground next to his husband who was sitting on his haunches with his long legs straight out in front of him, leaning back on his hands and looking completely wiped out.
Stephen immediately reached for his unborn daughter, and to his immense relief, the flesh under his palm yielded readily. "You shouldn't have done that."
The withering look in Loki's eyes could not mean anything other than 'I am Loki. I do what I want.'
Still, there was no stopping himself once he had started ranting, "You have created a branched timeline, a completely new reality –"
"Any new reality was better than having her lose her life that night, along with her parents, all her brothers and sisters and the rest of her clan."
"You ended up prolonging it." Stephen counted silently in his head. "By several centuries."
"Yes." Loki did not look the slightest bit guilty.
"Your paths should not have crossed." Stephen knew it was futile, he could not possibly undo what Loki had done eons ago. "By saving her life, you have altered her destiny, both your destinies!"
"And yet our overlapping destinies have brought us together," Loki said calmly. "If I had not saved her, she would not have become the Sorcerer Supreme. You would never have met her, and she would never have saved you."
"We would never have met." Loki's hand reached for his, and Stephen found his hand pressed once more to the soft curve of Loki's stomach. "And our daughter would have died in my belly tonight, and we would have a stillborn instead of the perfect little princess we have been hoping for."
"What?" His heart began to thunder in his chest. "Loki, let's go back, we need to get you checked out –"
"No. Not yet. I am not done yet."
"What are you talking about?" The frustration was rearing its head once more, threatening to swallow Stephen whole.
"Her magic's not done healing me. I need to stay here just a little bit longer." Loki visibly shivered as a chill ran through his body.
"Whose magic?" Stephen gave the Cloak a pat, and it immediately flew to drape over Loki's shoulders. "The Ancient One?"
"This was where her powers were first awakened, Stephen." Loki tightened the Cloak around him gratefully. "She knew I was coming. Her magic, it was waiting for me."
Stephen stared at him, flabbergasted. Then his eyes hardened. "No."
"No. You couldn't have known what was going to happen this far ahead. You saved her for a reason." The sceptic in him demanded a different answer. "What was it?"
Loki's eyes shadowed over. His lips parted, and closed again, clearly reluctant to speak.
"What was it, Loki?"
It took a moment but Loki finally answered. "It was love."
Loki turned to look at him, and despite his answer, Stephen saw nothing in his green eyes but sorrow.
"Love?"
"I have loved many before you, Stephen. Each one different and special in her own way." Loki's gaze dropped to the ground, taking on the distant, glazed look of reminiscence. "As I leave every one behind, some memories remain. I try to keep them separate, but as centuries passed, they become a jumble in my head. Once they get too much, I let them…slip."
Loki lifted his chin, back in the present once more. "But I remember their faces. Each and every one of them."
Stephen's thought processes came to a conclusion that was immediately met with an incredulity he did not expect. "You saved her because she looked like your ex-lover?"
"No. Not just because she looked like her. She was her." Loki said imploringly. "I felt it in my soul the very moment our eyes met."
"You are talking of reincarnation."
Loki looked thoughtful. "Yes, I suppose I am."
"That is impossible."
"Is it? Yet you believe I was Lugh."
"You just changed personalities, Loki, that's a totally different thing altogether. It even has its own chapter in psychiatry textbooks." There were still some things his analytical and scientific brain could not wrap his head around despite his calling as the Sorcerer Supreme. "You would have had to die before you could claim yourself reborn."
"Who says I didn't?" Loki asked lightly. He inhaled deeply. For some reason, he felt slightly woozy.
"You need to give me more, Loki," Stephen said gravely. "More truths. Not secrets."
Secrets.
As if the sudden burden of having to divulge them was physically strenuous, Loki began to list sideways and Stephen immediately wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Strange, do you know why, out of all my Names, the God of Mischief was the one that stuck?"
Loki did not wait for Stephen to answer.
"Because I could not stay away from the world of man. Whenever I got tired or bored of being the Worshipped, I would become the Worshipper. I would become one of you," Loki said calmly. "Just because I could."
"I would leave Asgard for years on end, and no one would bat an eye. Oh, there goes the Second Prince, off on one of his little adventures, they would say," Loki said viciously. "Thor never liked not knowing where I was, and whenever it rained hail and fury, I knew it was time to check in. I would pop back to Asgard, show my face, and once my family was satisfied that I was still alive and had gone back to ignoring me, I would pop back out again."
"And I reveled in walking amongst you, taking on persona after persona, living out each lifetime in its entirety so I could create my own ending, make my own stories…" Loki's voice trailed. His eyes danced. "Oh those were the days, Stephen."
"But sometimes those stories ended badly. Tragic tales that would become the food of bards, spun out of truths and lies alike, that soon became too fantastic to be believed." Loki pursed his lips. "It is a blessing in disguise for if you only knew what some of my past lives had done, you would not bear to even look at me, let alone betroth yourself unto me."
Loki laced their fingers together. "You are a brave man, Stephen Strange."
"I try not to fear the unknown." Stephen reached up to sweep a lock of black hair away from Loki's eyes. "I only fear not being able to protect you, just because you fear sharing the unknown with me."
Loki stared at him long and hard, and Stephen imagined he could hear the wheels of internal debate turning in his husband's fantastical mind.
"How good are you with your Irish mythology, Stephen?" Loki asked, finally.
"Not very, I'm afraid," Stephen admitted readily. "I kinda skipped I, jumped straight to Lo-Lu the last time I was down at the archives."
"I'm flattered." Loki laughed, all traces of hesitation disappearing behind his smile. "That's how you knew Lugh."
"Lugh was C. Under Celtic."
"Ah." He nodded once, before all mirth left him and his eyes clouded once more. "Then surely you have heard of Cúchulainn."
"The mythical Irish warrior?" Stephen's forehead wrinkled as he tried to recall. "Of the great Irish medieval saga, the Ulster Cycle?"
"Oh, do make me blush, Strange."
"A warrior of such prowess some say he is the son of Lugh, even going as far as to say that he is the Reincarnation of…Lugh…" Stephen's voice trailed, as the meaning of Loki's words sank in, "No."
"I am one and the same."
"You can't be him."
Loki's smile only dipped slightly. "I do not remember being him, not at present, no. But from time to time, I see bits and pieces, like echoes of someone else's life, more so if I were to wake in an unfamiliar place…"
"Rarely, it comes back full-force when something jolts me into the past, like being here, back in this place." Loki unconsciously placed a hand on his cheek and closed his eyes. "It's like…having someone else's memories inside your head. They don't feel like yours, but you feel…accountable all the same."
Stephen pulled back slightly to gaze at him in wonder. "How can you walk around with centuries upon centuries worth of memories in your head and not go insane?"
Loki had to laugh. "Have you met me?"
Stephen caught himself short. Loki waved a hand. "No matter."
"What matters is that I remember most of what he did." Loki's voice had gone from melancholic to heavily-tinged with regret. "Or what I did, rather."
Hugging him closer, Stephen planted his chin on top of Loki's head. "Tell me about him."
Loki took a deep breath, bracing himself for the worst. "You will hate me."
Stephen did not bother getting all indignant and offended as he normally would. "Tell me anyway," he said softly.
Loki fingered a nick on the side of Stephen's neck where he had cut himself shaving. Loki would need to do it for him from now on.
He would need to choose his words carefully then, if only to sway Stephen into hating him a little less once his tale was over.
"I did not just materialise into human history as the mighty Ulster hero I later became known as, you know." Loki sounded almost proud. "I did it the hard way."
"Scáthach was a legendary Scottish warrior-queen, renowned for her mastery of martial arts, a mentor so fearsome more died than survived her training regimen. You might have come across her in your reading, Doctor."
Stephen gave a noncommittal nod.
"She trained me in combat at her great castle, Dún Scáith, or the Fortress of Shadows, they call it in secret. How it once stood proud and impenetrable at the very heart of Skye."
"Oh, I wish you could have seen it, Stephen, if only it remained standing to this day," Loki gave an exalted sigh. "But alas, what remains of Skye is what you have seen on our…sort-of honeymoon."
"I will always remember it."
"Yes, I suppose you will." Loki tilted his head for a kiss. Stephen obliged. "You saved my life there."
But despite the kiss, the flutter of butterflies in his stomach did not take flight. His eyes dimmed.
"On that island, Cúchulainn met her sister." Loki's voice sounded strangely hollow. "Aífe."
"Aífe was a rival warrior-queen who had come to challenge her sister in battle. As I was Scáthach's champion, I took it upon myself to face her in combat."
Stephen guessed. "You bested her."
"I did, yes." Loki's eyes glazed over. "And as I held my blade to her throat, I made a bargain."
Stephen frowned. This time he did not venture another guess. He waited.
"Her life, for a son."
Loki swallowed hard. His throat was as dry as sandpaper. "Cúchulainn left her alone and with child, and returned to Ireland to marry another, a lady his fellow Ulstermen had chosen to be his wife, Emer."
"Aífe's wrath ran as dark and icy as storm clouds over a frozen loch in the depth of winter." Loki's voice betrayed the slightest shake. "For upon the son she bore, she swore that my life will justly be forfeit."
Loki gave a mirthless chuckle. "My tempestuous lover, with hair as red as was the fire in her belly, together with Scáthach raised Connla to be a warrior for only one purpose. To exact revenge."
"On you?"
"Yes."
"Many years passed and my son fully grown, Aífe sent him forth to seek me in Ireland, but before he departed, she placed three sacred geas on him."
Stephen felt Loki shudder as he exhaled. "Connla was to never give way to any man. He must never be the first to give his name. And he must never say no when challenged to a fight, even if it was to the death."
"But why? Why would she have done that?" Stephen wondered aloud, trying but failing to understand.
"Perhaps the pain in her heart was so great she wished to inflict upon me a pain worse than death?" Loki gave a little shrug. "Then again, who knows with women."
Stephen was quiet, but still very much disturbed; he did not like where this tale was going.
"Connla anchored on Baile's strand, near Dun Dealgan, all dressed in the fineries of a Scots warrior. And as Fate would have it, the entire court of Ulster was there, celebrating the first harvest and appealing to the God Lugh to safely bring it in – " Loki's breath caught in his chest, "And there he was."
"The finest-looking young man I had ever seen, with the fairest of skin, and the blackest of hair...but I did not know, I did not realise…" Loki closed his hands over his face. When they fell away, his eyes were red.
"For when the King of Ulster asked him his name, and he refused to give it, he was naturally deemed a foe," Loki said bitterly. "Ever eager to put him in his place for having insulted the King, one the great warriors of Ulster, Conall Cearnach, challenged Connla to a fight."
"And Connla defeated him," Stephen said with growing dread. He could see now where this was heading.
Loki nodded. "With ease." His eyes began to fill. "Who else did the King send forth then to face this stranger but his greatest warrior, Cúchulainn?"
"Emer recognised something in Connla, she suspected that he was my son by the other woman, and begged me to spare him. And I, in turn, begged the boy to give me his name, for I had no desire whatsoever to strike him, let alone kill him over such a petty little thing…" Loki's voice choked as he reined in a sob as the memories flooded in, overwhelming and suffocating, but he could not stop now, he must continue –
"With his dying breath, Connla revealed his identity." Loki's voice died down to a whisper. "In his cold, dead palm was the gold ring I had given Aífe, on the night we made him."
Loki pulled away from his husband's embrace in utter shame. He burrowed deeper into the Cloak, hiding his face as best as he could. "And that, Stephen, was the price of mischief. I have paid the highest price of all."
"I slaughtered my own son."
After a long eternity,
"You did not know he was your son."
"And that makes it alright?" Loki laughed despite the tears running down his face. "I still delivered the killing blow."
"Context is everything, Loki." Stephen shook his head stubbornly.
"You wanted to see me layer by layer, Stephen. Well, now you have." Loki pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
"You're five years too late to use such scare tactics on me, Odinson." A strong arm slowly found its way around Loki's shoulders once more. "They won't work anymore."
His hands fell away from his face. Loki turned and stared at him in wonder. "How can you still love me, knowing what you know now?"
"How can I not?"
"You are a good man." Loki said blatantly. "I am a monster."
"I cannot judge you based on what you did in your past lives, Loki. I will not." Stephen shook his head. "It would not be fair on you."
"Why not?" Loki was genuinely confounded. "They were all me."
"They were you, before you became my Loki."
Loki's heart skipped a beat. "Your Loki?"
"I claimed you as mine when I married you." Stephen kissed his forehead. "You are mine to have until the end of my life."
"And be it a blessing or a curse, I have only one life to live, and in my short lifetime, I too, have done terrible deeds." Stephen took a deep breath. "I have taken lives, when I vowed to do no harm. In my arrogance, I have brought people back from the dead. I reversed timelines and realities, I peeked into the future, millions of futures, for purely selfish reasons that I later shamelessly justified as my prerogative, befitting my station as the Sorcerer Supreme."
Stephen asked him serenely, "Can you imagine the things I would do if I were to live for another thousand years?"
"No, Stephen, what you have done, it was all for the greater good." Loki shook his head vehemently. "It had to be done. You cannot fault yourself for something that simply had to be done."
"And now I want you to listen to yourself."
"What?"
"Do you judge me for the sins I have done in the past, before I met you?"
"No."
"Do you love me in spite of all the sins I have done in the past, before I met you?"
A soft, adamant "Yes."
"So how could you expect me to feel any differently about you?"
Despite having dried not a minute ago, Loki's eyes misted once more.
"I will never be your equal, Loki. Just on the basis of my genetic makeup I am no match, the years you've lived, the things you've seen and done, the multiverse you've traveled…" Stephen's thumb traced the hollow of his cheek.
"I will never be able to fathom what it must feel like to have lived a thousand years but I suspect, and this is just an educated guess of course because I am an educated man, that you needed to have these different personalities," Stephen stressed. "You lived under so many names, lived each lifetime as you said till the end and started a new one right after, for what else could you do?"
"I would go mad if I have to be stuck being the same person for a thousand years. Don't you think so?"
"I…suppose?"
"And your past lives, your stories, are just that. Stories. They made you who you are today." Stephen pressed their foreheads together. "And I know our story will be just as fantastic, when you look back on it. When I'm long dead and gone."
Loki felt suddenly giddy. "Stephen…"
"Fate brought us together, strangers in every sense of the word. We made a child on a lust-driven night, survived battle after battle, foe after foe, to reach where we are today. And here you are," Stephen's hand reverently cradled the curve of his stomach – "Carrying our second child in your belly, and I am telling you, I cannot be any happier."
"You can." Loki's eyes finally lit up. He smiled in the way one would when one had a juicy secret to share. "If I tell you that she is going to be okay."
"What do you mean?"
"I told you there was power in a name, Stephen." He breathed in deeply, savouring the refreshingly cold, clean air. "The Ancient One made me a promise. She bargained her name away for she knew that one day I would need it."
Loki gently laid a hand on his belly. "Aífe is going to be okay."
"Aífe." Stephen's eyes misted. His hand moved to touch the slight bulge in Loki's side he knew was the imprint of his daughter's head, and caressed it lightly.
Stephen teased it with a little magic and the bulge shifted. He smiled in delight. "I like that. I like that a lot."
"Better than Sekhmet?" Loki could not help but tease. "Or Stevia?"
Stephen rolled his eyes, "A bajillion times better."
"You do know Stevia is the name of a plant?" Stephen dead-panned. "And a food additive?"
Loki laughed softly. "I thought it sounded quite nice."
They chuckled again. Despite the sudden lift in the atmosphere, Stephen could not help but worry.
"Will it not remind you of her? The original Aífe I mean?" Stephen asked in concern. "Won't it be painful for you?"
"No. Not anymore." Loki's eyes felt so heavy, yet his heart was as light as a feather. "It is a cycle, one that has nearly come to a close."
"I hurt her. She hurt me. It took the death of our son to settle the score." Loki closed his eyes at the memory. "I forgave her and saved her life, reincarnated though she may be. She forgave me, and saved our daughter in return."
Stephen could see him roll his eyes under his closed eyelids. "Cryptic witch, that one. Gave me some obscure message about us some two hundred years ago, and expect me to remember? Goodness."
"I'm good, but I'm not that good."
Stephen's throat went suddenly dry. "The Ancient One…she foresaw us? Together?"
"She foresaw many things, told me very little, for I myself wanted to know little." His forehead wrinkled as he tried to recall the conversation from eons ago, over tea no less, "She told me of love."
He reopened his eyes. It was coming back now. "One of the great loves of my life. The greatest, in fact."
"You and her?" Four years married and still Stephen could have a ways to go before he could completely rein in his jealous streak.
But Loki should not tease, not when he could wipe the crestfallen look off Stephen's face with words and Loki knew just the right ones to say.
"She told me he would be handsome." A knowing smile graced his lips. "Very handsome."
Stephen stared at him for what felt like eternity, and when he could resist it no longer, Stephen leaned over to seize his lips.
"She didn't mention you by name, though," Loki said breathlessly, as they broke apart for a millisecond, "So it could still be someone else – hngh!"
Stephen pushed him none too gently onto the hard ground, and it had Loki seeing stars.
"Stephen –"
Loki fisted the front of Stephen's tunic and gasped in a breath before Stephen claimed his lips once more.
The magic had run its course. He was ready to go home now.
The pains he had been having in his stomach had all but disappeared, yet he felt strangely light-headed. He squeezed his eyes shut to see if he could shake it off, but that seemed to only make it worse. His head spun.
Loki's vision blurred in and out of focus as he tried his best to respond to Stephen's kisses but he could not muster much beyond parting his lips to steal little gasps of breath.
Mistaking it for consent, Stephen slipped in his tongue, and Loki would have moaned both in pleasure and in panic had Stephen not cut off all his air…but the panic was subdued, muted, like he was drowning on dry land.
Dimly, he could hear Stephen call his name, but he could not for the life of him answer. His hands slipped from their grasp, and flopped limply to his side.
Stephen called his name once more, urgently this time, but Loki was already fading.
"Loki!"
Stephen was shouting inside his head now, but he was too far gone.
Loki gave in completely to the darkness and slipped into blissful oblivion.
Manhattan, New York.
"I think he's coming around." Loki heard someone say. Faces swam in and out of focus, voices dimmed high and low like a mistuned radio.
"Yep, he's coming around, alright. Hey, snowflake, why don't you open your eyes for us, huh?" Another voice, gratingly familiar. Stark, he groaned inwardly.
"Loki?" The bespectacled face of a man loomed over his, suddenly blocking the bright light overhead and Loki sighed in relief.
"Strange!" Tony stuck his head through the giant portal. "You'd better get your ass back here. Snow White's waking up!"
"Don't call me that," Loki growled, trying to sound mean but it came across weak as a kitten.
"Oh good. Now I know he's really back with us."
Through bleary eyes, Loki watched as Stephen wheeled a machine the shape and size of a shoebox through the portal, his grey eyes instantly lighting up the moment their eyes met. "Loki."
Stephen parked the cardiotocograph machine against a wall and dropped into a stool by the bed. He looked as if he had aged overnight. "You gave me quite a scare, Loki."
"Sorry. Didn't mean to."
"Yeah. I wasn't scared at all. I get people dropping in with their unconscious, pregnant alien husbands all the time," Tony quipped from where he was leaning against the wall.
Loki glared at him, but directed the question at his husband. "Stephen, why am I here?"
"You're here because you fainted and we needed to find out why." Bruce plugged the cardiotocograph machine, hitting it with the heel of his hand once, twice, when it refused to start. "Shit, I think this thing's broken…"
"I didn't faint." Loki sniffed. "I don't faint."
"Right. So what were you doing just before you closed your eyes really tightly and let yourself go all limp and sent your husband into panic overdrive, anyway?"
"Nothing," Loki said sullenly. "Just walking down memory lane."
"More like climbing a memory mountain," Stephen muttered darkly.
"I will err on the side of caution and take the literal meaning behind what you just said." Bruce tried to make himself look as cross as possible. "Why did you think climbing a mountain in your condition was a good idea in the first place?"
"I don't have a condition –" Loki began heatedly.
"You're malnourished, underweight, anaemic – " Bruce ticked off his mental list.
"Don't forget crazy." Stark half-mumbled under his breath.
"Why are you still here, Stark?" Loki seethed
Tony raised his hands in surrender, "I'll order in. Pizza sound good? Okay." Without waiting for an answer, he quickly slipped out of the medical bay.
Apparently, Bruce was far from done with his list, "And has it ever occurred to you that you're also thirty weeks pregnant?"
"Wow. Really." Loki dead-panned. "I thought I was just gassy."
Bruce shook his head. Apparently he had no receptors in his brain for snark. "No wonder you fainted. The air is thin at such high altitude."
He looked at Stephen somewhat accusingly. Sorcerer Supreme or not, he was not going to get away either. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Stephen could only say the one thing that could acquit him of all blame. "Loki does what Loki wants, you know that."
Bruce sighed, and took off his spectacles, rubbing the lenses against the breast of his shirt. "We can only hope there is no lasting effect on the baby."
"She's fine." Loki closed his eyes. "I can feel it."
"Let's take a look then, shall we." Bruce waited until Loki lost his outer leathers and reluctantly lifted his undershirt in implied consent. Bruce deftly handled the probe as he brought the first images of their daughter onto the screen.
Loki sank his head back against the pillow and smiled as Aífe wiggled and tumbled and cartwheeled away every time Bruce's probe came close to getting a clear image.
"She's a feisty one, isn't she?" Bruce chuckled. "Much more active than the last time I saw her."
"Now that's interesting." He pointed at something on the monitor. "The placental calcifications seem to have disappeared. See?"
"I think you might be right, Dr Banner," Stephen marvelled. "But they aren't usually reversible. How can they be gone?"
"Ultrasound artifacts?" Bruce ventured a guess.
"Over several scans using different machines? Unlikely."
"I told you. She's fine." But of course, no one ever listened to Loki.
"The amniotic fluid's back to normal levels too."
"And would you look at that," Bruce continued, his voice tinged in amazement. "The umbilical artery Doppler's showing more or less normal perfusion across the placenta now."
"Banner, I could kiss you right now." Stephen broke into a huge smile. "That is the best news I've heard in weeks."
"Don't kiss me, kiss him." Bruce pointed the probe at his patient.
And Stephen did just that.
"Loki, she's going to be fine," Stephen's eyes shone.
He grabbed Loki's hand and kissed the back of it softly. He could feel the tension and the anxiety that had built up over the months melt away, little by little. "She's going to be just fine."
Loki rolled his eyes. His husband was such a softie.
"Duh."