LV
The Spider's Web (previously titled Natural History), from "Poems & Sketches of E.B. White" published in 1966 by E.B. White
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
LVI
The runes are dark against the gold band. He can feel the power embedded in the sharp angles, the sinuous curves. They are made from old magic. Older than he.
Lukas has compiled his report. He will advise S.H.I.E.L.D. against making use of the Ring. As much as he desires answers from Raina, it is these runes that halt him.
Seidr lives in his bones, in his blood, it is the spark in the deepest chambers of his heart. On his most fundamental level, he is magic. And thus he knows the necessity of caution. To treat the Ring with less than absolute delicacy is folly. Lukas learned well from his time under its enchantment. To blunder on without a planned approach of any sort would be as foolish for a mortal as approaching - well, him, were he unbound by disguise. If he were unallied to the realm of Midgard, uncaring of their flamespark lives.
As it was the last time, when you set the Destroyer upon one of their towns. He grinds his teeth.
Dr. Pfeifer pokes the ancient magical object. "A pretty thing," he declares. Lukas sighs.
"Do not think to wear it," he cautions. "I would not risk the Ring's seidr."
"Seidr?" Dr. Pfeifer snorts. "You've spent too long reading those neo-pagan mythology books."
"Thor has come to earth, and you doubt the existence of seidr?"
"He is not a god, at least, not in the way the Norse of old would have understood it."
"Yet he wields the hammer Mjolnir, and descends from the sky. If Thor exists, then it follows other aspects of his mythology should as well."
Dr. Pfeifer frowns. Lukas does not want him to contemplate the existence of the rest of the pantheon overlong. "The Ring has power, whatever its provenance."
"If this is seidr, then why are the runes not recognizable? They are like nothing I have seen."
"I think it is older than we know."
"It doesn't make sense. The runes on the Ring itself are not any permutation of Norse writing I can make out, but those burned into that agent's chest are?"
Agent Morris. The runes that he had been called to examine in the beginning of his acquaintance with S.H.I.E.L.D. Lie-spinner.
"Perhaps it has been modified, in the centuries since its forging. To accept Aesir magic," Lukas muses.
Barton groans, loud and long. "Can I put it back away, now? You can have your debate later. I would say over beers, but it's pretty clear neither of you are any fun."
The archer sits next to the open lead-lined case. Coulson has taken no end of precautions when storing his 0-8-4. Barton was his trusted courier, and will ferry the Ring back to wherever his boss has hidden it after Lukas and Dr. Pfeifer are done with their examination. It was a pointless endeavor. Lukas has already made up his mind. Coulson's last ditch effort to sway him, enticing him with its delicious potential, did not work.
"You may put it away," Lukas instructs. Barton snaps off a sarcastic salute.
"I might ask Thor to take a look," Dr. Pfeifer says. As if he can be assured the prince will grant him any favor he thinks to ask.
"He would not know it." Lukas gathers his papers together, straightening the edges with an overly-hard tap on the metal table.
"And why is that? Didn't you just say it had been modified for Aesir magic?"
It is not that Lukas cannot think of a response. There is no blankness, no searching and stumbling. Truly, there is too much he could say - and all of it revealing, answers that will bare the skin of a pale throat. Unarmored words. He cannot afford to be anything less than a fortress. Something that will withstand the brash fury of a storm's reckless onslaught.
"Thor has never been named a master of seidr," he manages.
"True enough," Dr. Pfeifer concedes. "But it couldn't hurt."
"To show a wildly powerful foreign prince who hopes to form a treaty with your planet a cursed magical object that was either lost - or stolen - from his own homeland? Yes, seems harmless."
Barton glances to the Ring. "Ah, better put a sock in it, Doc, until Coulson says otherwise."
"Thor is honorable," Pfeifer argues. "He will not hold us responsible. The first humans to actually hold this Ring, assuming it even came from his homeland, are long dead now. There is no blame on our part for simply finding it."
"You forget he is Prince of Asgard," Lukas warns. The title sticks in his throat, and he clears it. "The weight of his duty may compel him to act to recover the Ring, no matter its human caretakers."
It could happen. Theoretically. If Thor were to recognize the Ring's power, and decide it was best kept from meddling hands in Asgard's vault. With the other dangerous treasures.
His throat is too dry now to even clear. Lukas swallows, trying to reign in his thoughts - they had been scattered by dreams last night, flung apart to wander the realms - of memory and cosmology both. Sleep had been a remote prize. Coveted and denied.
To have the Ring so near, a clarion bell ringing discordant, blurring the more fine and delicate of his senses, does not help. And the Tesseract is a constant tugging in the back of his mind, like a well of dark gravity. Though - farther now, than it used to be. Perhaps Coulson has taken to storing that treasure in a lead-lined case as well. Remarkably cautious, for one so eager to use other objects of power towards his own ends.
"You seem predisposed to think ill of the prince," Pfeifer observes. "I cannot think why."
"And you disposed to consider him an ally before any agreement has been made." Lukas shoves the Ring's stand into Barton's hand and waves urgently at the lead-lined case.
Barton follows his command, though he bristles as a grumpy stallion would against the bridle. "Prince of Asgard, right, okay. So what - are we 'sposed to bow or something when we meet him?"
"A show of obeisance is protocol when being introduced to royalty." Dr. Pfeifer manages to look self-important despite the crumbs in his scraggly beard. "An accomplished warrior such as Thor Odinsson would expect as much."
Lukas rolls his eyes. "Perhaps you could try a curtsy, Barton. Or get on your knees."
The man flips him off. "Only if someone buys me dinner first."
"I'm sure Thor would happily provision you with a meal if he knew such a boon awaited him at the end of it."
"Mocking a god might not be the most prudent course of action." Dr. Pfeifer fixes him with a stare, down his nose.
"Shame," Lukas says. "That's my specialty."
Coulson arrives before Lukas can poke Dr. Pfeifer hard enough to deflate the pretentious shell of the academic.
He had called Agent Roberts, to tell her it was done, but she hadn't answered. That was mildly annoying, since she'd been pestering him about this report for weeks. Lukas had emailed it instead, forwarded to Coulson. He knew that his conclusions would not be well received. But they had asked for an expert's opinion, and that is what they had received, as little as S.H.I. . knew or appreciated their good fortune.
"I read your report." Coulson pinches the bridge of his nose. "And - seriously? We can't use the Ring because - magic? Curses?"
"Is it so unreasonable, to expect an object of great power to have equally heavy consequences?"
"We don't have time for this," he complains. "The Tesseract might be compromised. Distortions in space and time are beginning to open in random places. I finally have Raina in the detention facility, right here in the Helicarrier, and now I can't use the best weapon I've got against her?"
"You'll just have to rely on your wits, Agent Coulson. Such as they are."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he says dryly.
"And Roberts? Has she read my report yet?"
Coulson shifts his gaze away from Lukas. Minutely. A tiny break in his constant calm. In his pocket, Lukas presses his finger and thumb together tightly. Coulson knows where Roberts is, and he feels guilty, for some reason.
He's about to press for more when Coulson's phone chimes. "It's Hill," he mutters, eyes skimming the text. His posture loosens. "Thor's back," he says, evidently relieved.
Lukas does not twitch. "Oh?"
"Yeah. C'mon, Dr. Pfeifer. Unless - you sure you don't wanna come?"
"The detector," he reminds Coulson. "More important."
"Alright." His lips purse.
The three of them leave, taking that bedeviled Ring with them. Lukas stands a moment, alone. He does not want to dawdle here in this base, with Coulson's honored guest so close. But he cannot spur his feet onward. Constructing the detector should be his next step, as he told the agent. The ljosvaldr crystal is in his possession, the runes themselves chosen… but the task does not appeal. He needs focus, concentration, for carving the runes and channeling his intent. Something that eludes at present.
Frustration grips him. The muscles in his neck are tense, driving an ache upward into his skull. Lukas makes a conscious effort to rein in his rambling thoughts, gather the dispersed parts of himself to the present. He has not fully succeeded when a young S.H.I.E.L.D. lab tech barges in.
"Oh, uh - sorry, thought this one was free," she mumbles.
Lukas quickly evacuates the area, not wanting to explain why he was brooding in an empty darkened room. He roams the corridor. Now that he has started moving he cannot seem to stop.
Roseanne's garden sprouts in his mind. He has long found solace there. Lukas turns with new purpose, descending a short flight of stairs into another ubiquitous, blandly pleasant hall. An inoffensive watercolor in muddled tones of blue and green hangs suspended upon the riveted metal wall, a touch of color that is wildly out of place in the bulk of the Helicarrier.
He's reached a junction when he stutters to a halt. It is the voice that tugs at him, latching chains to his ankles. Utterly foreign, when contrasted with the humans' chatter. Projected far enough down the hall, deep and loud, that Lukas can hear his half of the conversation with no effort.
Foreign to Lukas, out of place and strange and at once breathtakingly common. Anticipated, even though the wait felt like centuries, eons, a lifetime. A voice he would know even in the deepest sleep, one that wakes something in him now, a long forgotten instinct, to turn his body fully and look up at the speaker, neglected flower to the sun of his presence.
The last word he'd heard Thor speak was his name. No - not his name. The other. And not spoken. Screamed.
Lukas freezes in place.
There are no convenient doors in this stretch of corridor to slip through. No stairs, he's come too far. Just blank stretches of grey metal, a cold expanse of blue-white fluorescent lights. The voice grows ever louder, closer.
Shock transmutes into panic, bubbling in his gut, casting every inch of space around him into sudden, excruciating detail: the shiver of air in his lungs, the rapid tattoo of his heart, the clamminess of his palms. The bright, electric pulse of seidr crackling through the air.
Seidr. He shifts to the first form that comes to him.
The woman straightens her blazer, now too tight, ill-fitting upon her chest and loose in the waist. She tugs on the edge of her newly shortened skirt. Thick dark hair is a blanket on her back, tickling at her elbows. She stares down at the screen of her cell, though it is black. Breath comes too quick from her lips.
They pass within inches of her. Coulson and Dr. Pfeifer. Tony Stark. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and handlers.
The prince.
Dr. Pfeifer is rambling, dissonant sounds, what seems like a stream of unending questions. Thor's response rises above the din. "Goats? For transport? I do not - I was given to understand they are not truly ridden here on Midgard."
"No, no, they draw a chariot, you see…"
The cavalcade passes. She grips her phone tightly. Risks a glance upward, and meets Tony Stark's eye. He dawdles behind the rest, smirking at her.
"Well, hello, my beautiful dark angel. Haven't seen you around here before," he says. "And I woulda remembered." Stark winks.
She stares at him, and past him, to Thor's retreating back. Unwilling to speak just yet. She can shift her features, her body, but her voice is not so easily disguised.
"Don't be intimidated," Stark tells her. "The only charge for my autograph is an ten digit number." His gaze flicks to her cell phone.
This is too ungodly bizarre, on a day full of other disturbances. Shoving past him, she goes to the junction of the halls and turns left, the opposite way of Thor's party.
"You S.H.I.E.L.D. types play hard to get, but you know where to find me!"
Nearly running, she ducks into the first bathroom she sees, locks herself in a stall. Rests her forehead on the door, clenches her trembling fingers into fists.
She needs to be Lukas to leave the base. Her badge will no doubt record her travels, and this badge is registered to a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. A male consultant.
The change comes as she bids, sideways, like sliding into the etherpaths between realms. Not a transformation so much as a lateral shift, another form that she claims as much as this one.
Golden bracers crawl over her forearms. "No," she hisses. Pushes back. The seidr tingles in her limbs, looking for a familiar shape and confused at her resistance. Lukas Eld. Not - just Lukas. Lukas, Lukas.
A weight descends on the crown of her head and she rejects it with a jerky movement, without daring to examine the shape. "Lukas," she prays.
It comes together slowly. He leaves the stall and examines himself in the mirror. Looking for cracks, and seeing none, though he feels shattered, the fragments hastily pieced together, the glue disintegrating.
Hurrying through the halls, head canted down, he nearly lays Jemma Simmons out. She and Fitz are coming from the cafeteria. "Lukas!" she calls out, surprised. "There you - are you alright?"
They peer at him. He cannot find anything to reassure them with. Mumbling an excuse, he darts past, out the Helicarrier's side exit. Thank bloody Helheim they are temporarily grounded, for maintenance and a resupply. He has only to make it to the nearest alley, where he steps through a broken doorway and comes out from underneath the willow tree in Roseanne's yard. He halts, breathing in warm soil and freshly cut grass. There is no room for anyone else but Lukas Eld here. It is a relief.
The kitchen counters are cluttered with ingredients. An empty mixing bowl, a wooden spoon with batter crusted on the edge. Lukas is making a cup of tea when Roseanne bustles in. She hums happily when she sees him. "Well hello, stranger! You've been busy lately."
"Working diligently," he agrees, after a slight pause. "I was finally able to get away."
"It's a shame you didn't come earlier." Roseanne comes over and pats him on the cheek. "You're a few minutes too late." She notices his expression and explains. "You just missed your friend."
"Friend?" His tongue is numb. Vision spotty. Beyond every corner he turns, he thinks he sees a broad back, a flowing red cape. She can't mean -
"The pretty little agent. Roberts."
"Agent Roberts?" Understanding comes with much difficulty, filtering in and out of the sieve that is his mind. He sets the teacup down, hard. "Why?"
"Why was she here? Said she was looking for you. I invited her to stay for some coffee, and we got to talkin'. You know how I get."
She knew Lukas would be on the Helicarrier. "About what?" he asks hoarsely. There is a deepening pit inside of him, a familiar yawning darkness. Betrayed again, of course. Did you expect better? They do not trust you.
"Oh, just chatting. About the kids, and the museum. You, of course. She was so curious to know all about you. How you got here." Roseanne shows her dimples. "I think that means she's sweet on you! And don't worry. I only told her the best."
"You are - " Foolish, he thinks. Naive. Guileless. Stupid. " - too kind," he chokes out.
She looks pleased. "Hungry? I've got some lemon bars in the oven."
"No, thank you, my lady." Lukas retreats from her, stumbling over his own feet. Vertigo washes over him, the ground tips up, the ceiling bends down. "I'm - tired. Very tired. Going to bed."
He doesn't wait to hear her answer. Lukas staggers out of the house, across the garden, no longer a place of refuge, tainted, trodden upon by another life. All of his other lives, colliding here, a cataclysm, an impending death. A mortal death. His mortal death.
He trips up the steps to the guesthouse. The quilt lain upon the bed is soft beneath him. He shuts his eyes, fists his hands in the coverlet, and tries to anchor himself to the earth. Breathes out and banishes all thought, as long as he possibly can.
The quiet does not last.
Thor's voice echoes in the hollows of his skull. He sees Asgard, rising from the dark behind his lids - the pitching sea under a star-speckled sky, a garden with white and gold tiled paths, a mage's library nested high upon a spire, so high that he can look down and see the main courtyard before the palace, the sparring ring to the west, the stretch of rainbow bridge.
The courtyard is empty, as is the sparring ring. No one comes down the bridge, or in and out of the palace. Asgard is empty of people, blessedly quiet. Even the sea is muffled, waves breaking soundless against the stone beaches.
Lukas turns back from the view, adjusts his seat in the cushioned chair. The mage's cuffs he wears are bright in the dim, gilded, rather than silver like the rest of the apprentices. A concession to his title.
A consultant. You're a consultant. Lukas frowns at the thought, the peculiar word. He takes a deep breath through his nose and is distracted by the scent, the air filled with incense. Sweet and fragrant, rich with pine and the musk of starblossom, the salt tang of the rim-ocean. It smells like home, and his tense shoulders relax.
Roseanne reclines in the mahogany chair across from him. He remembers that chair. The Head Mage's study. Lukas had attended her at this very desk when he was at the Academy of Mysteries.
"Sweetheart, I need you to talk to me."
His tongue is thick in his throat. "The theory is sound," he argues. That was what this had been about - Lukas knows the Head Mage had disagreed with him. Interrealm travel. She hadn't believed the gates he'd designed were stable enough to use. "I did the calculations myself."
"I understand," Roseanne answers. He shakes his head, wrong-footed.
"But you disagreed. They - they disagreed."
"Is that why you left?"
Left? He's in Asgard. The Sky Spire rises against the glimmer of the emerald nebula, outside of the arched windows. He had been reading there this afternoon.
"Tell me, hon. Did they exile you for your theories?" Her voice is soft, patient. "They never did appreciate magecraft. Forever mired in their own cowardice. Too afraid to strive for greatness."
No, no, there was a bridge. I fell. I let go. He didn't catch me. Lukas's mind is muddled. He fell, but he is in Asgard now, sitting across from the Head Mage. Roseanne.
"You are not supposed to be here." The conviction is unearthed from the depths of his subconscious. Wrong, his thoughts whisper. Wrong.
"Is that what they told you? Is that why you left, little mage?" Roseanne leans forward. There are red runes painted across the line of her cheekbones.
"I knew it," he says slowly. "I knew I did not belong here. They did not tell me, but I knew."
"It is the practice of the throne of Asgard to cast out those who disagree with them." Her lips twist. "Those they scorn. Those they consider inferior. Even Odin's own children are not safe from his hypocrisy."
I am not Odin's child. And Thor was not cast out, not truly. The return path was laid for him before he travelled to Midgard. There was no path for Lo - Lukas.
Any potential words in this direction die upon his lips. Instead - "He didn't cast me out. I fell."
She muses, hand to her chin. "Did you?"
Lukas clutches the arms of his chair. "I don't know," he tries to whisper. It comes out garbled, indecipherable.
"My prince," she says. His mind spins, disjointed. "Why did you leave Asgard?"
Her eyes flash up to him. The tawny, golden brown color glows in the soft light of the torches, mouth twisted up cruelly.
Brown. Roseanne's eyes are blue. Pale, ice blue, eyes that used to remind him of snow-covered plains and a raw, aching loss, and now instead call back to something even more dangerous. A childhood, a past deeply buried.
Her eyes are brown and apprehension grips his limbs, melding him to the chair in which he sits. "Who are you?" Lukas whispers.
"A mage. Like you." Her white hair lies across one shoulder in a many-layered braid. "An exile. Also like you, I believe."
He glances down, and sees a ring upon his finger. A golden band, constricting ever tighter.
This is not possible. I warded the Ring of Andvari myself… And then handed it over to Coulson. To S.H.I.E.L.D. This cannot be the actual Ring.
If the Ring is an illusion, then so is the room. The Head Mage's study, the starfires of the nebulae outside the window, his own gilded collar and embroidered tunic. Head Mage Isli, he remembers.
Roseanne, clad in Aesir robes and reclining in the chair across from him, now strikes a discordant note, off-key. "A dream," he says, as she stares at him. "You have walked into my dream."
A catlike smile uncurls on her face. She looks less and less like Roseanne with every moment. Golden-brown eyes narrow at him. "And you let me," the woman tells him. "Forgetting within your mortal skin. Careless of you, child."
He pulls sharply on his seidr, tightening the weave around himself. Sleeping loosens the mind, lets the thoughts unspool, the magic seep out, into realms unseen, imperceptible during the waking hours. Not that his mind had been particularly guarded before he fell asleep. Careless is one word. Complacent is another.
There are workings to guard against dream thieves and wandering. One is carved into the headboard above his bed in Asgard. He hadn't thought to deface Roseanne's wall replacing it. Hadn't needed to, until he'd seen the Tesseract, felt the space within.
Something in that space had clearly felt him. His fingers shape a rune of banishment.
The study shatters apart, cracks crawling across the stone, splitting the walls, black streaks of lightning shooting through the illusion. Lukas focuses on the boundary between his mind and the space beyond, yanking every part of himself back inside before he squeezes all the holes closed.
The woman with the red-painted runes on her cheek watches, unsmiling now. The Ring twists on his finger, so tight he cannot escape it, and painful, like it is anchoring the whole of his body there, taking all of its weight.
He pulls against it. The Ring tugs back, or the woman, and he falls forward as the floor dissipates beneath him.
Struggling to shore up the shield of seidr around his mind, Lukas closes his eyes. He can feel the rush of air, the fingers of the Void, snatching at his clothing, his ankles, pulling at his hair. Falling, again, always falling.
This is a nightmare, he tells himself. No more. His mouth tastes like rust, or old blood, and he resists the urge to spit. That is the woman - her seidr manifesting as a sensory experience, a way for him to interpret the foreign magic that is invading his skull.
He does spit, then, and at the same time lets his own power flare, burning out the shadows. Pain splits him in two, an axe strike to the temple, but he succeeds. The metallic taste vanishes, the scent of ancient blood evaporates.
He's still falling.
Opening his eyes as wide as they can go, Lukas glances around, frantic to make out a shape in the consuming blackness. There is nothing. He screws them shut again.
"Wake up," he commands. A dark wind blows his hair against his face. "Wake up!"
When he was young, and trapped by terrors within his own head, someone was there to wake him. To shake his shoulders, brush fingers across his brow. Murmur softly in his ear, Loki, Loki, I am here. You are well.
Tears spring to line his lower lashes. He tries to bury the haunting voice, that voice, so familiar, not so strange, tries to banish the phantom touch.
The fingers tangle in his hair. Warm breath on his cheek. "Loki," the voice says. "All is well. I am here."
His back is flat on something soft. A blanket is around his knees, kicked away. The person next to him taps him on the forehead. "Wake up, Loki."
He opens his eyes. The blond child is curled up on top of the covers, head resting on the same pillow as his own. "You were having a nightmare," Thor says, his eyes an unwavering blue. "But you don't have to be scared anymore. I'm here, Loki."
A sob catches in his throat. "Leave," he begs the child. "Just go."
"I won't leave you."
"Thor," he whispers. The name fractures within him, like an impact, radiating pain. "Go."
"Why?" the child asks.
"Because I hate you." Water leaks onto the silk pillowcase they share.
Thor smiles and it is blinding. "Loki," he laughs. "You're such a liar."
He rips apart the dream, slashes it open with a scream that scalds his throat. The bedroom is no more, the child is long dead. Both of them. He stares up at the low plaster ceiling of a mortal house and promises the ghosts in his mind, "I am not Loki. My name is Lukas Eld."
He turns on his side, presses his cheek into the cotton pillowcase. It is wet.
