Chapter 43 - Sixth Sense

Thor woke up to the feeling of a hot little body curled against him. His eyes not yet open, his hand moved almost of its own volition to one of the legs that had become intertwined with his. He ran his hand up that leg and when it came into contact with a fleshly thigh, he gave it a squeeze. "Mmm, Jane—"

"Not Jane," said a voice that definitely was not Jane's.

Thor opened his eyes to his sister's highly unamused expression. Quickly he removed his hand from her thigh. "Loki, what are you doing in my bed?"

"You've never minded before."

"You haven't gotten into bed with me since you were seven hundred years old."

Loki looked away, and Thor saw a tinge of red color her cheeks. "Yes, well, I've never gotten up in the middle of the night and bumped into Lady Kelda's ghost before."

Thor sat up in bed, letting the covers fall to his waist. He became self-conscious of the fact that he was nude, and began looking around for something to put on. "You should have woken me up instead of just crawling into bed with me, even if you did see Lady Kelda's shade. Would you mind turning around for a moment?"

Loki rolled her eyes, but she turned over so that her back was to him. "It's not like it's anything I haven't seen before. We used to bathe together."

"Not with you in that form."

"As if it makes a difference. What do you think, that I won't be able to keep myself from launching myself at that broad, muscular chest of yours, licking a line straight from your navel to—"

"That isn't funny, sister." Thor got out of bed and grabbed the pair of leather pants he had dropped on the floor the night before. When he turned around, Loki had already turned back in his direction and was wearing a big grin. He decided to ignore it. "Now, what was that about Lady Kelda?"

Loki turned over, resting the back of her head in her hands as she stared up at the ceiling. "I bumped into her last night, and she told me that she and her mortal beau were both murdered—by Amora, apparently. I promised her I would pass on the message."

Thor wasn't sure what to think. Was Loki making this up? He couldn't think of a reason why she should. Perhaps she had hallucinated the event, as she had previously hallucinated an intruder who had come to threaten her in her prison cell nearly a year before. "Loki, are you certain this actually happened?"

"I'm not making it up."

"I didn't say you were. But I think that perhaps you ought to speak to Healer Samson about this."

"You think I'm delusional, then."

"You must admit, Sister, that it wouldn't be the first time—"

"I know what I saw. And this isn't even the first time I've seen a ghost. I spoke with the shade of one of Doom's servants when we went to Latveria."

Thor's mouth worked, but no sound came out of it. He wasn't sure what he could say to Loki that wouldn't upset her. Perhaps he had better play along until Samson could be consulted. He gave his sister an indulgent smile. "Alright Sister, I believe you."

The scowl Loki had been giving him deepened. "No you don't. You think I'm psychotic."

"Can you blame me?" Thor said before thinking better of it. He took a deep breath to steady himself. "While I don't doubt that there are some who have a talent for communicating with the dead, you've never claimed to have such a power before. Not to mention, no one has seen Amora in a century; and while she's always been a little morally ambiguous, she's never struck me as a murderer."

"Me either, but I doubt she cares any more about mortal lives than your average Asgardian. I can totally see her 'accidentally' killing Kelda's little boyfriend without giving it much thought. Besides which, Amora's last known location happens to be Midgard, where Odin banished her over a hundred years before he banished you there."

Thor couldn't help thinking that Loki might have a point. He also couldn't help thinking that it may not have been the wisest thing his father had ever done, inflicting Amora on Midgard. He highly doubted she would have learned anything from the experience. Whether or not she had been involved in Kelda's death, perhaps it was time to find her and recall her to Asgard, along with any other potentially dangerous Asgardians his father and his father's predecessor had banished to the mortal realm.

He once again smiled at his brother. "Loki, I swear to you, I'm not entirely ruling out the possibility that you can see the dead now, but could you possibly see fit to humor me and have a talk with Healer Samson about your newfound power to speak with the dead? Just in case."

Loki rolled her eyes. "Fine—but I'm really not crazy. Not in that way, anyway."

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When Leonard opened his eyes, Loki was standing over him. "I see dead people," she said.

"That isn't funny," Leonard told her. "Also, that reference is really old now."

Loki's eyebrows furrowed together. "What reference? I'm trying to tell you that I saw Lady Kelda's ghost last night."

Leonard sat up. He had been sleeping on the sofa outside the room where Bruce was still asleep. After everything that had happened, Bruce still needed a little space and he was trying to be understanding of that. He patted the seat next to him, and Loki sat down. "A lot has happened lately. It's understandable that—"

"I didn't hallucinate it, and it wasn't a sleep paralysis episode. I think it might have something to do with that time I was dead."

Leonard sighed deeply as he massaged his temples. He didn't want to admit it, but—"I guess there's a possibility that you're right. You were dead for three hours, and then you came back to life. That shouldn't be possible, and that's just one of the impossible things that have happened in the past few years."

"See, this is what I like about mortals. One thing happens to shatter your limited perception of reality, and suddenly, I could tell you that I have an invisible friend who's a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit, and you would believe me."

"Do you have a friend who's an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit?"

"No, that was a reference."

"To Harvey or Donnie Darko?"

"Would you be more concerned for me if it were a Donnie Darko reference?"

"A little. Isn't it rated R?" Tony had put parental controls on the common room TV and on Loki's tablet, so if it was, she shouldn't have been able to watch it.

"No, it's PG-13."

"I still don't think you should have watched it." Loki was just much too impressionable. "You're sure you haven't seen The Sixth Sense?"

"I haven't been living on Midgard long enough to view all of your insipid mortal entertainments. Should I see it?"

"Definitely no." Just to be sure, he'd ask Tony to have JARVIS block her from watching it. Maybe they should just block her from watching anything that wasn't rated G without running it by an adult (who wasn't Natasha; they had already caught her a few times letting Loki watch horror films that gave her nightmares later).

"Now you're being overprotective. Why is everyone always so—"

"Because you need it. Before now, the adults who should have been responsible for protecting you haven't done such a good job. As a result, you've never learned to protect yourself."

"That isn't—" Loki began to object, but then she paused. "Actually, you might be right."

"I think I've been working with you long enough to be fairly confident in that assessment. I've also been working with you long enough to think that there's a one-third chance that this thing with the ghosts is real, a one-third chance that you've been hallucinating—and you can't argue with me that it's impossible, because you just can't know that; hallucinations can be very, very real to the people who have them—and a one-third chance that you're just making all this up because you need attention. If that's the case, I just want to remind you that you don't need to make things up. If you need attention, it's okay to ask for it."

"I swear to you; I'm not making this up."

Leonard nodded, ninety-nine percent certain that Loki was telling the truth. "In that case, I think there's a fifty percent chance that you can actually see ghosts, and a fifty percent chance that there's another explanation. Can we agree on that?"

"Alright, fine. I won't entirely dismiss the possibility that I've gone completely mad."

"Loki—"

"I know you don't like that word, but I don't see how it's worse than saying I might be psychotic."

"Which is why 'psychotic' isn't a term I would use either."

"Then what would you say?"

"That you may be experiencing hallucinations, and that those hallucinations may or may not be related to a psychosis."

Loki rolled her eyes. "That's certainly a mouthful."

"It's might not be concise, but it's much more accurate. You're a person, not a diagnosis. You wouldn't call someone with cancer 'canceric.'"

"But wouldn't you call someone with diabetes 'diabetic?'" Loki always looked for contradictions and logical fallacies in the things others told her. To some people it might have been off-putting, but Leonard knew she couldn't help being both clever and genuinely curious. Far from the 'goddess of lies,' Loki was a seeker of truth.

"Actually, no. I mean, a lot of people who have diabetes don't mind if you say 'diabetic,' but the medical profession in general has been trying to get away from any term that calls a person by their diagnosis. Instead you would say 'person living with diabetes.' You're also not supposed to say 'victim,' 'suffering with,' or even 'patient,' because it has a connotation of being passive and comes from the Latin 'patiens,' which means 'to suffer.' Some people living with cancer don't even like the word 'survivor' because it's just too loaded a word."

"Midgardians truly are my people." Loki wistfully wiped a tear from her eye which may or may not have been there. "In the entirety of the nine realms—nay, the entire universe—I have never met a people so concerned with the intricacies of language."

Leonard really couldn't tell if he was being made fun of or if Loki was being serious. He stood up. "I'm going to get dressed. Your brother told us that we'd all be having breakfast in the great hall."

"Mortals to dine at the king's feasting table?" Loki grinned widely. "That should go over well with the court."

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"How come Tony and Pepper are up at the head table, and the rest of us are down here?" asked Wanda, as she poked at something that looked suspiciously like a reverse-engineered Midgardian toaster pastry.

Loki had to admit that the palace's food had gotten a little better since his brother had come into power. Somehow, Thor had even managed to import coffee and chocolate from Midgard. He pulled a piece of bread apart with his fingers and offered a chunk of it to Ikol, who gobbled it up. "I believe Thor has convinced the court that Tony and Pepper are King and Queen of the United States. Which doesn't feel too off base, when you think about it."

"Shouldn't you be up at the head table, too?" asked Pietro around a bite of flapjacks dripping in butter.

"You mean in my capacity as Prince of the United States of America?"

"No, as Prince of Asgard," Wanda answered for her brother, who was too busy stuffing his face to respond.

Loki dipped the rest of his bread directly into the small vat of honey that was meant for the entire table to share. "I didn't feel like being on display this morning, and so far, Thor hasn't said anything about it." Also, if he sat at the head table, either Thor or Pepper would stop him from eating nothing but the sweetest foods at the table. After the night he had had, he felt like he deserved to send himself into a sugar coma if he wanted to. He crammed the rest of his bread in his mouth as he reached for the silver pitcher of hot chocolate to top off his tankard.

"Don't you think you should slow down a little on the sugar?" asked Betty Ross, who sat between Loki and Leonard, primly sipping from a tankard of imported coffee. Loki still wasn't sure why it had been necessary for her to invite herself on this trip, but he would be damned if he was going to let this random woman tell him what to do.

"Yur nah mah mudder," he told her through a mouthful of the reverse-engineered éclair he had just crammed into his mouth. Ikol bit him on the ear, and this time Loki could swear he had taken a chunk out of it. "Ow! What was that for?"

"You know better than to talk with food in your mouth," said the bird. "Also, you are to apologize to Doctor Ross immediately. That is not how we were taught to speak to Asgard's guests."

"You really expect me to believe that you care about that? What, do you have a crush on her or something?"

"Either apologize, or I shall tell Frigga of your abhorrent behavior."

Loki knew himself well enough to know when he was bluffing. "Go ahead, tell her."

In a flutter of wings, Ikol moved from Loki's shoulder to the top of his head. "Apologize, or I'll mess in your hair."

"Ugh, that's disgusting—" Suddenly, Loki was aware that everyone else at the table was staring at him.

Leonard leaned around Ross and gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Hey, Loki, who are you talking to?"

Right, no one could hear Ikol speak except for him (and Frigga, he supposed, if Ikol was threatening to tell on him to her). "I'm talking to my bird."

Samson frowned. "Bird?"

"Yes, of course my—" Something occurred to Loki that really should have occurred to him before. "Ikol, I'm not the only one who can see you am I?"

"Not that I know of," the bird told him. "I told you before, I can't make myself invisible."

Loki highly doubted that Samson would pretend not to be able to see Ikol as some sort of prank, especially after the talk they had had that morning. That left him with only one conclusion left to draw. "Norns, I truly am mad," he said aloud, then rolled his eyes when Samson frowned at him. "Sorry, I meant I might truly be experiencing hallucinations possibly related to psychosis."

A shrill laugh echoed off the sides of the great hall, and it was as if someone hit pause on the scene around him. Everyone and everything froze, including the coffee that Doctor Banner had been in the process of pouring for himself, which had stopped halfway between pitcher and tankard. "Well, this can't be good," said Loki, as he rose to his feet. He turned around, and wasn't too surprised to see Sigyn looking smug. "Whatever's going on here, it's your doing," he guessed. "Either that, or you're an extremely vivid hallucination."

Sigyn scowled at him. "That's the second time you've accused me of being a figment of your imagination."

Loki began to hope he was hallucinating. That would be a much more comforting explanation than the idea that Sigyn's powers had somehow grown to include the ability to make Ikol invisible and to stop time. "How are you doing this?" he asked. "You haven't come into possession of any new magical talismans, have you?" Norns help them all if somehow, Sigyn had come into possession of both the Time Stone and the Reality Stone.

"You mean these?" Sigyn grinned as she held up a small pouch that radiated magical energy.

Luckily, it didn't feel anything like either of the stones that Loki had had in his possession. Besides, even if Sigyn had managed to stumble upon a couple of Infinity Stones, he highly doubted she would turn out to be one of the few beings in the universe capable of carrying them without proper containers. Then, Loki realized that he did in fact, recognize the energy radiating from Sigyn's direction. "Holy shit, Sigyn. Where did you get the Norn Stones?"

"That's it, you've been spending much too much time with mortals," Ikol scolded. "Remind me to wash your mouth out with soap the next time I get the chance."

"Well excuse me, Captain America."

Ikol hopped off his shoulder, and as he landed he turned himself into Steve in his full Captain America costume complete with shield. He saluted to Sigyn and began to sing "God Bless America" at the top of his lungs.

"Excuse me," Sigyn shouted above him, clearly having grown impatient with them for ignoring her sad little attempt at villainy, or whatever it actually was.

"We're listening," Loki assured her as Ikol continued his rendition of Irving Berlin's patriotic anthem. "Is there a point to this, or are you just showing off?"

Sigyn crossed her arms in front of her. "I just wanted to let you know what I was capable of now."

"So in other words, you're showing off; and it seems to me that the only thing you have shown yourself capable of that I didn't already know about is grand larceny, which is perhaps not the hand you ought to show the crown prince of Asgard. The last time I saw those stones, they were in Asgard's treasure room. But sure, I'll be happy to let the new King of Asgard know that you've been stealing from him."

"I didn't take them from the treasure room," Sigyn protested.

"Let's say I believe you." Actually, he did, because he really didn't think that Sigyn was clever enough to sneak past the Einherjar. "Where did you get them?"

"Nowhere." Sigyn's eyes shifted sideways, and her mouth flattened out into a straight line.

"Bilgesnipe droppings, Sigyn."

Ikol stopped singing. "Language," he warned in his own voice, which was a little disturbing coming out of Steve's mouth. A light washed over him, and he took his usual male Aesir form before turning towards Sigyn. "Someone gave them to you, then. Who was it?"

"None of your business. Who is this old man who looks like you?" she asked Loki. "A relative of yours?"

"He's my uncle," Loki lied for absolutely no reason.

"Really? Wait—" Sigyn's nose wrinkled up. "Does that mean he's a—"

"A what, Sigyn?"

"I think you know." Sigyn made a strangled choking noise. "To think I almost gave myself to a beast. Thank the Norns you weren't man enough to take advantage of the offer."

Loki froze up. Ever since he found out what he was, he had known that if his heritage became common knowledge, he would be viewed with horror and disgust by the majority of Asgardians. But this was the first time someone had actually said what he knew they were thinking to his face.

Ikol, on the other hand, stalked towards Sigyn slowly, and as he moved, his skin took on a blue tint. Sigyn just stared as if stunned that he would willingly take that form in front of her. "Perhaps we are beasts, but at least we aren't as ugly as you are."

Sigyn lifted her chin defiantly. "You can insult me all you like, but that won't make it true. I am widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the nine realms."

When Ikol stopped, his face was only an inch or so away from hers. "I was, of course, referring to how ugly you are inside. But I could always arrange for your outsides to match."

Sigyn blinked at him as if stunned by the threat. Too slowly, she held up her little bag of Norn Stones. They began to glow, but before she could cast whatever spell it was she was reaching for, Ikol snatched them away from her; of course, that was likely why he had approached her in the first place.

"Hey, give those back!" Sigyn jumped for them like a child whose toys had been taken away by a bigger playmate, while Ikol easily held them out of her reach. "They're mine; the Enchantress gave them to me."

Loki groaned in disbelief. "Amora again?" Not that it didn't make more sense than Sigyn stealing them. Amora wouldn't have had any trouble charming the guards—or enchanting them, technically—into letting her in the treasure room. Still, it was a little disturbing that she had been able to break her banishment and slip into the palace unannounced. He could only surmise that it had happened after Odin became unfit for the throne and Thor, who had never had much talent for magic, had taken over.