(A/N) Okay, so this site is super limited but basically, there are way more characters than Loki. Farbauti, Laufey, The Entire Avengers Team Which Is Somehow Not A Tag, Strange, you name it-This is essentially a time travel fix-it fic.
Thank's for giving this a chance in spite of the lack of flexibility im offered with tagging and the description! you can find a much more put-together version on AO3 under the same name; it'll also give you a better understanding of the story's direction.
This fic will be rewriting some of the Norse myths involving Loki from a perspective in which he has foresight.
Loki is absolutely genderfluid and I'll tolerate no bigotry on the topic.
I'm not sure if I'll do romantic relationships further on, but the future is uncertain.
Though I will be dipping into politics and bigotry, the overall tone of this fic is meant to be light. That doesn't mean there won't be darker themes in the plot, just that I won't drag it out into the overarching storyline.
To be fair, he wasn't certain what he expected when he died.
Niflheim; Helheim if he was lucky. But a room so vast he couldn't see the walls, green fog rolling around his legs, and a surprised looking mirror of himself was in the low thousands.
Well, he said mirror, but he doesn't remember looking quite so…Feral. The man leans forward abruptly, and Loki flinches back, reaching for a knife that wasn't there. The man, black hair wild and coat worn, reveals a missing tooth when he speaks. "Dude, you are like, hella Not Supposed to Be Here."
"By all means," Loki says, to which he looks fascinated. "Point me to the nearest exit and I'll be on my way."
The man grins, abrupt and lopsided. "Names Loki," He says, jabbing a thumb at himself. Loki frowns, and he rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, you're a Loki too, but what number? I could've sworn we were all accounted for…"
He turns on his heel, striding deeper into the fog. Loki pauses, considers, feels the fog thickening and sliding around his legs with a rasp like shadows, and decides a polite trot was an acceptable speed to trail the man at.
"Oh," The man calls, fog rolling away from him as he walked. "Shit might get confusing, so you can call me the Story Teller. Do you know your number?"
"Asking for my bust size already?" Loki drawls, unease raking up his spine.
"We're a C!" Story teller chirps immediately, then spins to face him with a shit eating grin plastered to her face.
Loki, because he is not a child, does not shift into a woman as well.
…He's prettier, hands down.
It occurs to him, as he watches pillars surrounding a marble podium emerge from the fog; that he might be vaguely hysterical. Story Teller comes to a stop, staring expectantly at the podium.
Loki steps closer, fog breathing down his neck with wet whispers, and as though he'd crossed some invisible line, the green floods away behind him to a fathomless black.
Something catches in his throat, stuttering his gasp as his stomach drops to his feet.
But the floor stays, doesn't drop him into an uncontrolled spiral, and he forces himself to look at the ground, praying to whatever controlled this hell that it wouldn't give way to the void. It looks like silvered obsidian.
"This usually works," She admits, and he drags his eyes up to stare at her. Her coat is the same green that lined his cloaks, with gold armoring over her shoulders and forearms. Around her wrist, a bracelet tethers a glowing blue orb that floats aimlessly in the dark.
Nothing reflects it.
Not even her.
"Well, performance issues, not uncommon." She doesn't react except to pout at him. So, they looked the same, but didn't share memories.
He…well, he couldn't work with that, but it was information that didn't bring back memories of a freefall; burning like nails in the back of his neck.
"You don't understand," She says, voice rising. "It always works." With that, she cracks her foot into it, and the world trembles around him; a muffled boom echoes from distant corners.
The podium shudders, and Loki stares blankly at the helm that now crowns it. It's his helmet, horns and all. "Oh." She says, looking vaguely disappointed. "It's full-sized. Well. You can't be Loki #616; I killed that one."
Ice shoots down his spine, and he's suddenly aware of how much space there was around him—the air was stale, empty, exposed. She continues to speak, tapping her foot as she did. "Well, I suppose I've killed another number too, but that ones the sin that will not be forgiven. Rules are different there."
Loki steps back, but a hand placed firmly on the small of his back stops him cold. He jerks, spinning around and heartbeat rushing into his ears.
The woman standing before him is nearly a head taller than him—but the face is the same. She looks annoyed, he thinks dazedly, but unlike Story Teller, appears to be made of the same, glowing translucency as the orb. 'Listen,' she mouths, and slides her cold gaze back to the podium.
Loki turns partially, watching Story Teller from the corner of his eye. There are more specters gathered around the podium now, all wearing his face—some look more travel worn than others. Ones sporting a beard. He thinks there might even be a child, but they're hiding behind the leg of a tired looking teen.
Story Teller's picked up the helm, looking it over—then, she finds the seams and disassembles the helmet with a triumphant cry.
"Found it! The numbers on the inside. Weird place to inscribe it but—Oh, maybe you are supposed to be here. Earth #199999, huh?" She turns to face him, eyes glowing an unworldly green. "Your reincarnation isn't scheduled for another era. So why are you awake?"
She walks forward, and this time when Loki retreats the woman doesn't stop him. Story Teller notices her though, waving—the woman closes her eyes and dissipates. With her, the rest began to fall away, eyes slipping shut with soundless sighs.
"Reincarnation?" Loki asks, then, belatedly: "Where am I?"
"Well, you're dead, obviously. I don't know where we are, but all those blue thingies? Our souls, stories, each time we die we come here and I record them before they can be forgotten. God of Lies, God of Stories, same thing, y'know?"
He didn't.
"I'm different, alive. Everyone you just saw, though…Probably you in a past life. Probably. Some are separate, like me. Depends on your number. The woman behind you was from Earth #3490. Either way, you should be asleep. Only the ones who are going to reincarnate soon wake up, but you've literally just died, so."
She spreads her arms out, still eyeing him curiously, a vague smile on her lips. "Any questions?"
Loki's heart had never stopped racing, not really, but this time the blood is pressing so hard against his ears he's dizzied by the force of it.
"What happens if I don't sleep?" "You will, soon enough." Loki licks his lips, tries to put more weight on his heels, anything to ground him to this dream-like scape. "What if I am supposed to be reincarnated, right now? What would happen?"
She shrugs again. "Dunno, never died and reincarnated. I died and possessed a kid though: From what I could tell, he didn't remember shit, pretty happy. A fresh start, basically."
A fresh start. Possessed a kid?
"You…possessed someone?" "Oh, I wouldn't recommend it, terrible business, but that's my story…What's yours?"
"You remembered though," Loki presses, ignoring her, and Story Teller narrows her eyes, lips curling a bit.
"…You can't do it. Not the way I did." She says, but she hasn't left, still standing here in an abyss of black and watching him with a calculating gleam caught in the corners of her eyes; tugging at her lips.
"You had to possess someone, which means your form wasn't corporeal at the time—but you had to have had a way to exit this place." "Maybe," She says, tilting her head back to hide the grin rapidly overtaking her face.
'she's excited,' He realizes. Not plotting against him or trying to stop him, and the hope burns like sawdust in the base of his throat; the same thing that had choked him before Thanos could. 'Please,' He thinks, unsure of who to, and it fades emptily in the silence that stretches.
"What if I exited the place fully corporeal?" "Nada, you'd have to deal with the Loki on the other side of the door. Besides, you aren't corporeal."
"I take his body then," Loki challenges, and when she drops her head to give him an unimpressed look, continues. "Not possess, as in share the same space—what if I trade souls with the Loki there?"
She presses her lips together.
"I don't know man. Still sounds a bit murdery, sin that will not be forgiven stuff. Although…Hey, you enter early enough, before the soul's had time to settle, before the story's had time to start…Hmm. Maybe. You'd be a baby though, hardly useful or sturdy enough to handle all those memories."
She falls quiet, and Loki closes his eyes, realizes how shallow his breaths were.
'Please,' he thinks again, Thor on his knees and screaming and worlds and lives falling away from him as he'd tumbled into a void; the same hand that'd folded his mind, powered by his own insecurities and desires; the one that'd killed him.
Loki was not a good man, or a strong one; not when it mattered. Not ever, Not really.
("You really are the worst brother.")
'Please,' He thinks.
She snaps abruptly, breaking her silence with a manic gleam to her eye.
"Okay, okay, okay, so, you've been dead, what, 10 minutes? that's pretty fresh, I might be able to pull some shit off with the body out there and the mind in here. Won't be pretty, might be messed up a bit—"
She raises her hands, and seidr builds around them. It feels like an inferno to the empty, cold pit in his chest, and the absence of the familiar hearth is perhaps more stunning than death.
"—Definitely going to be older than you should be—" He can feel a tug then, somewhere in his temples, and then his head's crushed inward like an empty soda can.
"Why?" Loki grits out, and she laughs, wild and clear and the bracelet on her wrist hums happily in response. "Because this is going to make one hell of a story." The pillars are shaking, but it might just be Loki.
"A word of advice from the pro?" She offers, like Loki's in any condition to speak, and he falls to his knees and screams. "Don't just do the same things all over again. I'll pull some strings, give you the ending to the story you left behind, and hey—"
He can't see. He can't see, but somehow there's that knife slash of a grin in his vision, missing tooth and all.
"—I'll see what I can do about getting you some clothes."
For the second time in 10 minutes, the world ends.
The sky is thick enough with snow he can't tell it apart from the stars; if Jotunheim had ever been graced with any.
For the longest time, he lies there, snow numbing his ears and melting on his cheeks. His breath puffs quietly in the silence. A melancholy wind howls through the caverns of distant mountains.
And he remembers.
Well, not remembers as such, that would imply the memories were his own.
He sees battlefields and burning skies, Thanos waiting and a timestream split for a temporary, desperate grab for victory. He sees the victory grasped, feels the emptiness of it in a world disarrayed and an iron heart laid to rest. He feels the emptiness of it; removed as he was from the faces and tears of his enemies.
The ache only hits him, well and truly, when he sees Thor, when he sees Asgard, and it buries itself in his chest with a desperate wheeze for breath and burning eyes.
Nornir, he left the oaf alone for a couple of years and he'd behaved like his entire world had come to pieces.
Unbelievable.
Loki sits up. He's lucky the tears hadn't fallen, or his eyelashes would have frozen together. He wondered if Jötnar had tear ducts. If they did, he wondered if they'd have cried for the ruins lying before him.
The temple had been torn down completely; ice so thick it might have been stone lying splintered. The snow draped it; a funeral shroud. Loki stands stiffly, muscles cramping like they'd been stretched to breaking only a moment before.
He eyes it over. He doesn't know why. Maybe he expects to feel something, staring at delicately carved imagery in a language he doesn't understand. Crystals lie in the center of the large, cracked circle that might have been the foundations of the temple.
They'd likely been suspended, if the twisted iron hooks were to be believed; clear and faceted and singing with sweeping winds as they clinked together in an endless song. Maybe the jötnar had hummed, the same way the Vanir did, but with low, rolling baritones that'd thrummed through the mountains.
He feels nothing.
Clothes rustle behind him, and he turns, stares at a one-eyed man with a tall, placid warrior beside him, and would it be weird to turn right back around or no?
"What are you doing here, young one?" Odin asks, weary and lined and blue blood still caked to his boots.
'I record things,' Story Teller had said, a surprisingly honest smile. She looked happy.
Loki, to say the least, panics. "Exploring," He blurts, and Odin is frowning at his clothes (what was he wearing?), with a hard glint in his eye he recognizes as concern. When he'd been a child, it'd looked more like anger. "That's what I do, I, record things. Great temple, bad ending, figured somebody should write this down—" "How old are you?" Odin cuts him off, and for the first time, Loki realizes he was looking up at the All-Father.
'old enough,' Loki wants to say, but the lie is heavy on his tongue. He wasn't. What was he doing? "Its rude to ask a lady her age," Loki says instead, arching a brow imperiously.
'A word of advice from the pro? Don't just do the same things all over again.' Don't repeat the same mistakes, and what had it been when Odin took him in if not for a mistake?
'Your wife is dead,' Loki thinks at him. 'So are you, and your people, all because you were too damned soft.'
"My apologies," Odin says drily, and the small, sad smile that tugs at Loki's lips is more sincere than it should be.
"You're forgiven," Loki says quietly, before stiffening his smile into something more approaching a smirk. Odin ignores it, though Heimdall turns his head a bit. He had always seen more than he should.
Loki was tired.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" Odin asks, concerned for the seemingly Vanir boy standing alone in a wasteland, green eyes wide and blank.
He wasn't strong enough for this. Odin would offer him the same thing he had before, and he wasn't strong enough for this. He wouldn't be able to refuse, not again. 'Don't' Loki thinks. 'Don't do this.'
"Oh, absolutely," Loki chirps, and the seidr builds in his chest—its young, terrifyingly so, but just enough, and Loki grins; manic. "Not here." And with that, he steps back, and Odin stares as the boy slips into the space between worlds.
"…Interesting," Heimdall deadpans, when the surprise between them stretches too long. Odin frowns. "…Aye."
Well, this was terrific.
Loki should be more terrified.
He absolutely should be more terrified.
But after dying, reincarnating, and meeting his dead father, the fact he was currently falling 40 feet toward a tree cover just seemed par the course.
Loki tumbles wildly, his apparently hugely oversized coat tangling around him as he did—if he was reading this right, everything he was wearing was more the same, and frankly it was a miracle he hadn't lost a boot yet.
He was aiming for the ledge that overlooked a Vanir forest; one that unrolled westward for acres in an impenetrable sea.
In hindsight, the ledge had formed when one of the mountains had collapsed, causing the ensuing landslide to close in the valley—something which hadn't happened yet, so instead this rift just opened into dead space.
"I hate you." Loki whispers to whatever Norn would hear him.
The Norn must return the sentiment, because he breaks through the tree cover with a put-upon sigh and hopes he's sturdier than a cosmic "a la fuck you".
For the first couple of layers, he is, despite the fact he's got more cuts than he knows what to do with, and the rips in his coat have started to look like a dire wolf had taken a liking to him.
Then he gets clotheslined by a branch bigger than he was.
He makes a strangled 'boomph' noise, world jerked to an abrupt stop, and hangs folded over it like a wet rag.
All in all, a very 10 out of 10 victory for the Nornir as a whole; he's sure.
"Shit," He gasps hoarsely, stomach already numbing—he doesn't move for a while, staring with wavering vision down into the depths of the forest. The roots of these trees were twice the height of the average Asgardian.
He allows himself a sad little whining noise before he attempts to move. He grabs a twig that offshoots the branch and places his weight on it getting his legs up.
A bit of finagling later, and he still hasn't lost a boot, surprisingly—what he has lost is the skin on the back of his throat from when he spent 10 minutes vomiting bile into the darkness.
"Well this is lovely." He groans, and pokes warily at his stomach. His shirt is long enough to go to his knees, thin green linen that slid off his shoulders.
He'd given up trying to roll up the sleeves. His stomach is pale, purpling in a broad strip along his stomach. He thinks he might be, what, 8?
It doesn't feel like anything's broken and the only blood he's spit is from where he bit his tongue. The bruising would get annoying though, if he let it be. He just fell through a forest, he didn't need a stiff midsection to go with it.
He pauses, straddling the branch with his ankles crossed to avoid losing the boots.
Jötnar were cold.
Loki was tired. Too tired for the nausea, the sickness, the tunnel vision and the hands digging into flesh he wanted to tear off himself. 'Get over yourself,' He thinks furiously, and shapeshifts his hand.
The burden of shapeshifting was a small one, one he barely noticed; having gone most of his life in a different form—but for such a young body, the relief was immediate, and some of the seidr recalls itself to his chest.
It's weird. His hand tells him that the forest is warm, humid almost, but cold wind brushes its fingers through his hair and whispers of him to the trees.
Its very…blue. His nails are black, harder. They look like claws, overgrown and ungroomed.
Loki slides his eyes away, expression blank, and holds the hand against his stomach like an icepack.
It works for a while before the hand starts to become uncomfortably hot, but the swelling had reduced and some of his seidr recovered.
He sighs, folding an Aesir shape around the hand, and watches as raised ridges sink into skin. It smooths out, blue rapidly paling to an almost corpse like white.
Then the blood responds, and the blue undertone flushes pink.
A branch creaks overhead, heavier than the ones moved by winds, and a distant croon rakes down his spine.
Loki shudders, and without hesitation, unhooks his ankles and hurls himself off the branch—it shakes, slammed into with a furious beat of wings, and bark cracks and falls after him as the croon escalates into a vicious screech.
He yelped, twisting to avoid another branch and reaching desperately for a thinner twig—he's falling too fast, and the bark rips the skin off his fingers in reprimand.
Leaves catch him, smacking into his face and tearing at his hair till tears bead; as though he needed less to see by.
When it clears, he's still falling and the creature has dived after him—its too large though, buffeting him as it searches for a way past the rapidly dwindling space in the lower undergrowth; till with a scream that sounded almost humane in its fury, it sweeps back to higher hunting grounds.
The next twig he reaches for hits his palms rather than his fingers, which close desperately around it. God, his hands were so inconvenient why did they have to be that small.
His shoulders creak, head snapping forward as his fall is jerked to an unwieldly stop.
He's already slipping however, dizzied and unsure if he wasn't falling upward instead.
Loki hits the roots, and though his brain knows to put his hands out and try to roll to a stop, his body has no experience with the maneuver and accomplishes something more akin to launching himself face first into a root.
He keels backward, vision sputtering desperately, and the center of his forehead pumps out a deluge of white spots in a terrible attempt at helping clear it.
'Don't pass out with a head injury,' He thinks, before doing exactly that.
When he next wakes, seidr helpfully filling his vision with green crackles of energy, it's because a horse is sniffing at his head.
"You're…. rank. Very, not…good? Oh, that's a twig. You're eating a twig out of my hair. You're a weird horse. Thanks." The horse huffs hot air into his face in response.
His seidr pops cheerfully, the ache subsided to a vague hum somewhere in the back of his skull, and his ears clear with an abrupt influx of noise. Most noticeably, the horse was now eating twigs out of his hair in high definition. Less noticeably, people were talking.
"I'm telling you he isn't dead!" The woman snaps, voice lilting. "Well he fuckin looks dead, don't he?" "Oh, for the love of—If we ran over everyone who looked dead, you'd be road kill you goddamn bumpkin."
"At this rate," Loki wheezes, attempting to sit up, "you could just wait for me to die."
The horse, unimpressed by his movement, shoves him back down because it's a wretched creature and hates everything good with the world.
'You probably get snapped you know,' Loki thinks at it haughtily, and it answers by chewing thoughtfully on the collar of his coat. 'I'm doing you a favor by being here.'
"Oh, Skuld tits, he really is alive!" The man leans out of his cart to stare at him, beard bristling—Belatedly, Loki realizes both the horse and the man are armored and muddy. The woman peers out a moment later.
She looks Vanir, with dark hair braided tightly to her head. There's dried blood in one of her nostrils, and a scab torn open over her eyebrow.
Her dark circles compete with the black of her hair. "What did you do boy, lose a fight to a tree?"
"Transparently," Loki answers, as she allows him to sit up with a tug at the horse's reins. "It'd be unfair to call it a fight, ma'am."
She's wearing an Asgardian cape, in a soldier's colors. Not einherjar, probably from an outpost here on Vanaheim.
"What are you doing out here?" She commands, and Beard rolls his eyes and elbows her over—she squawks, and with a single hand the man heaves Loki into the cart. His other is broken, but unbandaged.
Loki just lets him do it, not even trying to pretend like he wasn't going to pass out again.
"Oh, come off it Isa, the lad looks bad enough without you being a cunt about it!" "SOLVEIG!" "WHAT?" "Language!" "Oh, come off it!"
There's another man in the cart—his breastplate lies crumpled beside him. The number of bandages around his chest say he'd been inside it when it happened, yet somehow, he manages to sleep through his comrades bickering.
Between the three of them, Loki decides to just take it as it was and snuggle down into the oversized coat. The collar was tall enough to hide his face up to his ears.
"Those your clothes?" She barks at him again, suspicion tightening the corners of her mouth, and with a roll of his eyes Solveig snaps the reins. The horse begins to trundle onward.
"Well they're not yours, are they?"
Isa narrows her eyes at him. He sighs, and dredges out a lie. "They're my father's." He says, then adds in deadpan: "He's dead."
Isa purses her lips but nods, turning back to hacking the wheels free of the vegetation.
Loki stares at her. Granted, he didn't know much about Vanaheim's culture, but he was certain stripping your dead parents of their clothes wasn't part of it.
Huffing, he leans back into the coat and allows his eyes to be dragged closed. His seidr gutters to embers in his chest, and the green fades from his vision. The head injury must've been serious, if he'd tried to heal it so low on energy.
He pauses, and looks at the arms of the dusty, worn out coat—the seam meant for his shoulder was halfway down his arm, yet the coat hadn't slipped off. And the shirt definitely fell over his hands.
He needed the seidr.
'Get over yourself,' Loki thinks again, annoyed and tired and hollow with a grief devoid of rage; perched heavily on shoulders too thin to bear it.
He recalls the Aesir shape from his arms and calves. Quietly, the seidr stirs in his chest and with a sigh like bellows, begins to work at building the flame.
Loki squeezed his eyes shut till they teared; tries to sleep like he wouldn't feel the nausea begging him to tearitofftearitofftearitoff—
Beside him, Isa murmurs and draws her cape against the nights chill.
When he wakes, its because he had started to overheat again—sighing, he shifts back into his Aesir form. The night greets him with cold relief as reward.
He stares blearily out into the thinning wood. Isa had sheathed her sword, and the rumble of a path bore the cart—Solveig wasn't in it, coaxing the shaking horse along with a low baritone and a soothing hand.
"Where are we?" He yawns, and Isa spares him a glance. Her eyes are a dark, rich brown. "Eastbend." she answers, and points toward the massive, rushing river the path crawled beside. "We approach Sumac. Beyond it are the Glass Ranges, then the fields." "Where are you going?"
She's quiet for a moment, before tiredly patting the sleeping man's chest, where blood had begun to seep through the bandages. His breaths rattle with the wheels. "Home," She answers, then laughs. It's brittle.
Loki looks at her. He knows Sumac, named for the thrush of berries that thrived in the area—it was a port city, called The City of Spice more commonly. It was hours away.
"I can heal him, somewhat." He offers, and she finally turns her head to look him over. After a moment, she snorts. "For what price?" She asks drily, then adds: "We'll drop you to Sumac besides. The Frost Giants will not take what little honor I have left, despite the hardships they bestow me."
There's something abruptly, uncomfortably familiar about the way she speaks—maybe it was the way she rolled the 'r' in frost giants, but it freaked him the fuck out, thanks.
"Enough money for a meal," He says, instead of any number of things. The familiarity makes him nervous, a memory he can't quite grasp—its not dangerous, the memory, but he has the intense, undeniable memory of running.
He hadn't run much as a child; not if he could help it.
She doesn't look like she believes him, but he's like, 8, what ulterior motives could he have, so she nods grimly and waves a hand for him to begin.
It occurs to him, as he calls seidr to his fingers and begins to feel along the man's chest, that he was, like, 8.
'Maybe she's desperate,' He thinks. It rings false.
The man's rib moves with light pressure, and Loki rolls his eyes skyward like he'd be able to glare at the Nornir if he tried.
The weight of the bandages, while aiding the rest of the cracked ribs, had pushed the fragmented one close to the lung.
Loki places his fingers in the hollow of the man's neck, and slips the seidr into clammy skin. The man inhales abruptly, a surprised gasp at the intrusion, and his eyes roll behind his eyelids.
The lung goes through the rib.
Loki stops being nice about it.
The seidr crackles, seizing the rib—its easy to pick out, and Loki pulls it free, ignoring it when the lung begins to fill with blood. He thinks the man might be screaming, but Isa is holding him down instead of pulling away this child, so Loki keeps going.
He mends the rib first—he doesn't seal the cracks, but its in one piece so he doesn't much care. Seidr wraps around the man's lung, rolling green through the bandages. The linen crackles from the heat.
He seals the puncture before drawing the blood out—he has to send it somewhere though, and mutters a quick apology before Isa makes a muffled squeaking noise that might have been horror and the blood spews out of the man's nose.
She immediately raises his head before he can choke on it, and Loki is, on some level, concerned about how calm she was being about unruly seidr healing. Loki wasn't a healer, and it showed.
His lung wasn't collapsing anymore though, so he mends the tears in the skin the breastplate had punctured, then ripped, when it was removed. The sternum's cracked, a significantly larger problem, so he mends that completely.
His seidr flickers, recoiling back into his hands. It had begun to stretch thin.
He pulls his hands back, but Isa was familiar, so he bites down on his tongue till he bleeds and puts his hands back on the man's chest.
'This,' Loki thinks uncharitably, as he exhales the last of his seidr into the man's skin and gives him the rest of his own energy, 'is worth more than a meal.'
The man inhales, and Loki falls back onto the floor of the cart. From this angle, what he can see of the man's limp hand flushes pink. Isa slowly lowers his head.
The cart was still moving, Solveig apparently wholly unconcerned by the ordeal. "Thank you," She says, quiet, and her armor creaks as she smooths the hair away from the man's forehead.
Loki lets his head loll back. "What's your name?" She asks, and with the manners of a former prince of Asgard, the charming trickster, the Silvertongue—he passes out.
The boots are ridiculous. Loki steps out of them, not even needing to tug them off, and hoists them over his shoulder with a sigh. The coat dragged as he walked, so it was folded over his arm—now that he had some light to go by, he realized it wasn't black. It was scorched though, as though Story Teller had dragged it through Muspellheim before dumping it into his arms with a 'DO NOT RETURN' tag.
The ends are torn and muddied, but if you squinted and prayed a little, maybe consulted the Nornir and begged Yggdrasil for a couple of centuries, you'd be able to tell it was green.
Few realms wore coats. He's pretty sure this is from Midgard. It had a lot of pockets, one with a receipt for a single pizza from a place called 'Chuck E Cheese.' It was the least damaged thing he had on him.
"You need new clothes," Isa says, watching him fold his pants inward until the cuffs were bulky enough to stop falling over his feet.
"No, I just planned to stay in these until I tripped over a cliff and died," Loki says, employing every skill he'd ever learned to make it sound as sincere as possible.
He's apparently got a belt, with a notch that looks like it'd been done for the sole purpose of fitting around his tiny waist. The actual buckle was the size of his hand. People usually wore belts so they could attach scabbards and extra pockets. He was just trying to keep his dignity.
Isa rolled her eyes, and behind her, Solveig cursed a blue streak attempting to keep the horse from choking on its feed—the soldier that'd helped him carry it over from the main outpost laughs and undoes the rest of its armors.
"Are you just going to…walk in?" Isa asks stiffly, then looks frustrated at herself. "That's the plan," Loki chirped, as though his stomach wasn't sinking as he stared into the city, past its gates.
It was massive. What was he doing? What'd he think would happen, for starters. That he'd just waltz in and hope everything right? If he could even do things right, he wouldn't be here.
He'd be next to Thor, with enough time to figure out his mess of a head, and the oaf would sit patiently and watch him with a small, smug smile like he already knew the answer to everything, it was insufferable—
"I meant, do you have anywhere to go?"
He was getting sick of people asking him that.
Loki arched an eyebrow and flipped the coin she had given him for food. "A tavern, for starters." He says. 'Somewhere to cheat people at cards for more money.' He means.
She frowns, dissatisfied. Her nose looks like its been broken once before, and hooked besides—her features are strong, complimenting it. She has a scar cutting her upper lip.
She doesn't look like anybody he'd met when he was young.
Finally, she sighs, shoulders lowering beneath the weight of her armor.
"I don't know why I'm asking," She admits, scrubbing a hand down her face. "You aren't my responsibility. Farewell, feral one." Loki, who'd been nodding in agreement, snaps his head up to give her an outraged look. "Excuse me?"
She's already limped past the gates though, knocking shoulders with Solveig before continuing on in the direction the healers had taken her other friend.
"Feral?" He repeats, offended. The bustle of the crowd is his only response.
Someone slaps a fish onto a table, and it immediately collapses, accompanied by a dismayed howl.
Loki scowls and trudges into the city, cold wet cobbles against his feet. "You don't just say that to people." He continues, and climbs onto a stack of crates for a view that wasn't just legs.
There're multiple other stalls selling fish, largely set up near docks that braved the turbulent Eastbend.
Further inland from the river, the open market begins to give way to shops and houses—though Vanaheim was largely countryside, the settlement of it by the Aesir meant larger cities retained little Vanir architecture. Most of the city sported glass and bronze, twisting structures that towered deep in the center of the city.
'The outskirts, however…' There's the edge of a sign, clipping around the corner of a street. One of the building's windows has been hastily boarded up, and taller buildings hide it from the hazy, pink dawn. Warm lantern light spills out into the shadows that drench its face. 'The outskirts aren't nearly as golden as The Golden City would like."
Loki bounds off the crate, and heads away from the tavern—there's a larger building, busier, with soldiers trudging in and out of it like clockwork.
As he approaches, he can hear cooks yelling, and ale gushing out of barrels by the bucket. There's a woman heading the door—She's tall enough Loki wonders if she isn't part giant, maybe from before the war started. At her command, men troop into the building carrying spools of bandages and crates of medicine.
The upper levels must be rooms—it made sense for the army to commandeer a building close to the gates, within easy reach of the fortified walls.
Despite Aesir-Vanir relations, Freyr had always refused the Einherjar a permanent station in Vanaheim. The war hadn't moved him.
Loki enters the inn. An Aesir nearly runs him over storming past—a moment later, two men flank him. Their armor is undented but their capes are stained purple with old, blue blood.
Scrambling beneath two men carrying a crate of potatoes between them, he realized that Vanaheim wouldn't get news of the wars end for a few days yet.
He has to duck beneath a table to cut through the crowd, emerging next to a table in a corner of the inn—it's empty, but missing a chair. Servers spin between tables, aprons flaring.
There are so many soldiers within, that they appear to be dishing food without orders. Each carried an empty bowl for quick payments at every table they stopped by.
It was a surprisingly effective system.
Loki drops his boots and coat beneath the table.
Heaving himself onto the table, he stood and craned his neck—one of the servers was carrying a tray heaped with roasted red meats. It didn't look like sumac though.
He spends the next few minutes like this, earning the passing curiosity of soldiers and the irritation of servers too busy to shoo him off the table. Once the Nornir had stopped laughing at the sight of him, he finally spotted what looked like a bright red stew.
He scrambles off the table and takes off after the server. A skirt is tugged, a tray nearly dropped on his head, a coin given, and ire received.
"You know that has sumac in it, don't you lad?" She asks, balancing the tray as she carefully lowers a bowl toward him, his change between her fingers.
"It'll hit a bit strange if you ain't a sorcerer, not really meant to be consumed in these quantities otherwise. We wouldn't even be serving it if it weren't Vanaheim's pride—" "Thanks," Loki says, not really listening, and ducks away again.
He's counting on her being too busy to wonder at a child amongst soldiers, and true to form, she's swallowed by the crowd without a second glance.
…Loki really, really hates sumac.
He takes it like a shot, which doesn't quite work with a bowl, but it burns the same as any liquor; maybe worse.
The hearth in his chest splashes to life like he'd hurled kerosene into it; an angry guttering that manifests in him gagging on the soup and having to pause and splutter what he'd inhaled. A deep breath, and he chugs it like he hadn't nearly drowned on it.
The first time he'd had it, he hadn't even known what it was—the warriors of three had given it to him, their idea of a joke.
It hadn't ended prettily, not with Loki gagging heaving breaths and his magic licking up his arms in a terrified, uncontrolled blaze. He doesn't remember much, just Thor yelling, furious, and the annoyance he'd been graced with by them for 'overreacting' when it was all said and done; more annoyed Thor was upset with them than the fact Loki had been a twitch away from a panic attack.
He hadn't known how to explain it to them, then. That he was a sorcerer, an Aesir sorcerer unused to Vanaheim's culture. He still doesn't. Maybe he'd been too angry to try, then.
His seidr builds up quickly. It feels like an oil burn. The bowl clatters to the table, and he blinks rapidly before shuddering. He thinks it might be illegal to serve sumac to kids. In her defense, the server hadn't known he was actually a sorcerer.
Somehow, he manages to stumble out of the inn, boots and coat in hand. His seidr is still building, which meant he had to use a lot of it, quickly, and in a sustained manner. A wild, manic laugh as he falls into the wall of the inn, in the alleyway the kitchen led out to. He can see the tavern he'd spotted earlier from here.
He laughs again, leaning heavily against the wood and sliding to the ground. It's more honest this time, and his seidr reaches. Nornir, this was hellish.
There's something dark and explosive building in his chest, the fear and the panic and the grief. Loki grins, jagged and broken around the edges, and flips the coins.
He hadn't caused true, honest chaos in a long time.
Jotunheim. It's familiar to her, as she walks. Ice and snow beneath her feet, hills that disappeared beneath swift enough feet an unthinkable mountain range to the Aesir.
She walks. Beneath the ice, the rivers and the oceans stir, whispering to her of their loss. The casket of ancient winters. Still, it was a loss she could bear.
She walks, and the lands shrink away from her fury.
Black hair, thickly braided and pinned with carved bone. The winds dared not touch it.
Dark skin, a blue so deep you could see the stars in the thick furs that draped her great back. The snows dared not touch it.
Her heritage lines sweep down her body, a map of roads and lives and histories emblazoned into powerful; roiling muscle. The stars dared not look upon it.
She carried no blade nor spear nor sword.
What use have she, for weapons made to pierce? Her eyes did that well enough.
Her staff plunges into the snow and she vaults cleanly over the chasm, stretching and narrowing deep into Jotunheim's heart. She lands, and the force of it silences the restless spirits that howled deep within.
She walks.
Her growl is caught deep in her chest, pressing against the back of her throat, begging for a release that would announce her intent to all that would listen; cow soldiers and spirits and beasts alike.
Jotunheim's winds were said to sing deep in the mountains, where the caverns dwelled; warning travelers of its dangers.
Tonight, the winds sung not to her, but for her.
She walks, and perhaps that is how Laufey knew to look for her.
Laufey. Nal. She had called him Nal once, towering behind his throne. Nal, for he was as slender as a needle and twice as beautiful. Laufey the leaves, and Farbauti the strike that would turn them ablaze; silence all of Jotunheim with the power of their union.
Farbauti towers above him once more. He's kneeling, hand to the grievous wound Odin had bestowed him. Over and over he formed ice to seal the wound, but the blood poured between his fingers and stained the ice blue beneath him.
He doesn't speak. He is not fool enough to think she was here to help him.
"Where is my child?" She asks, quiet. The winds die. The roar trapped in her chest builds, pressing against her temples till Ymir himself wavered beneath her; the great lands swaying. Her fury poisons her.
Laufey doesn't answer. For a final battle with Odin he had forsaken her child.
She laid ruin to the western approaches for him, still exhausted from the burden of childbirth. She hadn't even seen it. Trusted him to stand at the temple of Ymir, still be there when she returned.
Laufey had crawled away from it. Her heart turns in disgust.
"We lost the Casket." He says, bitter.
Farbauti screams, a wild, enraged noise that wrenched itself from her chest until her throat bled. It races across mountains, rivers, plains, cities.
Jotunheim knows enough not to expect their king to return.
When Farbauti walks into the palace, the throne room is empty. But the throne itself had been resized, shaped with ice and far too big to await Laufey.
Farbauti sits and slams her staff into the ground beside it. Utgard, capital of Jotunheim, stronghold of giants; hears.
Farbauti the wildfire had returned.