Over the next two weeks, Christine and Stephen helped Loki recover as the rest of Tvania prepared for a festival unlike anything the small neighborhood had ever seen. Every day, Loki got stronger, walked further, ate more, and every day new decorations went up around the village. Someone made a beautiful garland of vines and colorful strips of cloth hung across and between the houses, another group had cleared the field next to the neighborhood and turned it into some kind of sports field with two goals on either side. It seemed like every day someone would bring another bushelful of wild apples and blackberries to ferment into cider, which Loki kept insisting was actually mead.
Loki turned to Dr. Strange one day, much stronger, standing by himself, and obviously annoyed.
"It's mead because I say it is," he'd insisted. "As long as there's a bit of honey and alcohol in it, then that's mead enough for me. It's nothing compared to Asgardian mead but … "
Loki paused and looked wistfully out the window, tears filling his eyes. Stephen didn't need to ask him what was wrong.
"Some of Asgard survived Thanos' attack," he told Loki, which made him glance over in surprise. "They have a colony on Earth. My version of Earth."
"Is-is Thor … " Loki stumbled over his words and swallowed his tears. "Did Thanos kill him, like he killed me?"
"Your brother is alive and well," said Stephen with a smile. "And he cut off Thanos' head."
Stephen didn't feel like explaining the complicated, roundabout route his timeline had taken to truly defeat Thanos. Not yet, at least. Thanos' first death was more than dramatic-and satisfying-enough. Loki opened his mouth and let out a sigh of relief, but said nothing more about the subject.
Their friendship grew by the day with small conversations and tiny quibbles over Loki's stubborn will. Loki's trust in Stephen's judgement usually outweighed his petty urge to be right. But of course, Stephen knew he was the pot calling the kettle black. Christine would have said the same thing about Stephen several times over.
Finally, the day of the celebration came and Loki surprised everyone by walking down the stairs by himself, just like he said he would. His hollow cheeks had filled out, and he'd shaven his beard clean. He even had a bit of definition to his gangly arms. He'd dressed himself in a green coat with fur trim that definitely used to be a woman's coat, and some sort of homemade crown made of metal and spiraling goat horns.
"My wedding outfit," he explained to Stephen and Christine. "It's the nicest thing I have."
No one else had adorned any special clothing, besides Sylvie, who wore her wedding tiara made of a band of green painted leather and tiny deer antlers.
Mobius handed a wooden staff to Loki, taller than he was and carved with intricate, spiraling designs. The top ended in the wood forking in two directions, almost like another tiny set of horns. Standing proudly, he looked like a chief, through and through.
They made a procession from the house with the prince and princess in front and the doctors in the back. As they approached the huge bonfire the Tvanians had made in the middle of the street, the village cheered on their leader, many of them having dipped into the store of mead already. An entire deer roasted on a spit above the fire. The animal was a fresh, raw kill, dripping sizzling fat into the flames. Someone hauled two more gutted deer next to the fire hanging haphazardly out of a wheelbarrow, where they waited their turn to be cooked. Stephen hoped they hadn't forgotten about him. There was no way he could force himself to eat something he'd watched cooking with the head still on.
Loki lifted his arms and staff, simultaneously soaking up all the attention from the village and demanding more.
He raised one hand high above his head and shouted with glee, "Let the festival begin!"
With that, a huge plume of colorful, magical fireworks burst from Loki's outstretched hand, to a chorus of "ooh"s and "aah"s. Stephen noticed Christine and Sylvie sharing a wry, withering glance between each other. Loki seemed to need attention almost more than he needed food.
Tvania spent the sunny day drinking, singing, and playing a game called stickball, which was an ancient Native American sport one of the Tvanians remembered from their youth. The game was the ancestor to lacrosse, played with a stick that had a net carved into the end to catch and throw the ball. Stephen, already buzzed on too much blackberry mead, decided to join the others in the game. He regretted it after hearing the rules.
"No hitting with the stick above the waist," said Minco, the Choctaw Native that had introduced the game to Tvania, expertly twirling his small, hand carved stick. "You can tackle anyone with the ball. Don't touch the ball with your hands or kick it with your feet. No magic, obviously. Get the ball into the right goal. That's basically it."
"Wait, so there's no timer? When do you know you've won? When one side gets a certain number of goals?"
Minco shrugged. "In friendly games like this, goals aren't that important. We pretty much just keep going until one team gets worn out, or if there are too many injuries."
"Injuries?!"
Sylvie came up behind him, her sleeve rolled up and a bit of red cloth tied to her arm to signal she was on the opposite team. With a smirk, she smacked Stephen on the ass with her stick, hard, making him yelp.
"Good luck, doctor!" she waved to him as she passed. He sweated under the hot sun, feeling the alcohol go to his head a lot faster than he'd expected it to.
"Do we get, like, a helmet or pads or something?" he asked Minco.
Minco gave him a funny look, then burst out laughing, tossing his stick high into the air and catching it behind his back.
"Nope," was his only reply, after which he wandered off to join the rest of the team.
Christine waved to him from the sidelines as she sat on a picnic blanket, with Mobius and Loki on either side of her drinking mead, wisely deciding to stay out of the way.
Stephen wasn't a sports loving person at any point of his life, even in childhood, and he fumbled embarrassingly as he only half-heartedly attempted to catch the small rubber ball everyone was fighting over. Fighting wasn't even the right word: they attacked each other, brutally hitting each other around the legs with their sticks, dogpiling, falling and grabbing other players, pulling the one with the ball to the ground.
Stephen watched the madness from several yards away, considering just sitting out the next round, when to his terror the rubber ball came flying at him, hitting him in the chest. Before he had time to hot-potato the ball to someone else, an opposing team member whacked his shin with their wooden stick, full force.
He lost himself in the instant swell of pain and blood, screamed, and crumpled. For some reason, though, he didn't feel his head hit the ground. After getting his bearings, he looked to his side to see the ground hovering below him, just next to a rock that was buried well into the soil. Someone had caught him from bashing his head open on the stone when he fell. On the other side, though, no one was there holding on to him. He was just floating a few inches above the ground.
"Time out!" cried Minco, pointing a finger at Sylvie. "No magic! Disqualified!"
Stephen finally fell to earth, only mildly bumping his head. He sat up and looked around to see Sylvie throw her hands up in the air, her face red, panting heavily.
"It was for the opposing team!" she shouted. "We're not letting the doctor get clobbered to death, are we?"
Minco shook his head. "Doctor Strange knows the rules, he wanted to play. No magic means no magic, princess."
"Hey!" screamed Loki drunkenly from the sidelines. Christine, a worried look on her face, stood and tried to get Loki to sit back down. "You don't talk to royalty that way! That's my beautiful wife! You let her do whatever she wants!"
Sylvie tossed her sweaty locks and gave her husband a little wave. Loki looked as if he was about to charge onto the field, but Christine shoved him back down onto the ground by both shoulders. Grumbling, he angrily swiped his cup and downed the rest of his mead in one drag.
"Rules are rules, Sylvie," said Minco, arms crossed.
With an annoyed scoff, she helped Stephen to his feet and dragged him, limping, to the sidelines. Christine and the rest of them made room for them on the blanket. Sylvie took off her armband and gave it to Christine, who untied it and used it as a tourniquet for Stephen's bleeding wound.
"I had a feeling someone might get some scrapes," she said, bringing out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and package of gauze from her bag. "I didn't realize the goal of the game was to kill each other."
"Thank God you were prepared, because I sure wasn't," said Stephen. He groaned and winced as she poured stinging alcohol over his wound and pressed the gauze to staunch the blood.
"I probably should have mentioned that," said Mobius, one hand over his eyes as he watched the match continue. "I'm not nimble enough for this game. Sylvie usually wipes everyone out."
Sylvie smirked at that, leaning her head on Loki's shoulder as they sat together.
"You're too good for them, eh darling?" Loki grinned wide and kissed her neck. Drunkenly forgetting there was anyone else around, he started to kiss her everywhere, then knocked her over with the force of his affection, both of them giggling madly. Stephen couldn't stay quiet when he saw Sylvie's hands go down the back of Loki's pants.
"You guys, you're in public. Please don't."
Loki gave him an indignant frown and made a raspberry noise, but both of them sat up and watched the rest of the game in relative silence.
By the end of the day, the deer were finally ready to eat, and everyone was starving and tired and drunk out of their gourds. Loki and Sylvie sat at the center of a long, wooden kitchen table someone had dragged out of their house and next to the bonfire, with Mobius and Stephen on one side and Christine on the other. The rest of the village sat on logs or on the ground in a semicircle around the fire, devouring their shares of meat. Stephen had to admit, it smelled amazing.
Hasan served Loki half a rack of venison ribs, a ridiculously huge portion that would rival Fred Flintstone's gigantic dinosaur meat dinners. Loki dug in like he hadn't been eating like an elephant for the past few weeks.
Thankfully, Hasan hadn't forgotten about Stephen's diet, and served him some kind of amazing, tart vegetable curry with a side of fried bread.
"How in the world did you get curry spices? And wheat? There's a wheat field around here?" Stephen chewed his flat bread, which tasted just a bit off somehow, though he couldn't place it.
"There's some old spices left in the houses," answered Hasan, "I use them sparingly, but Minco turned me on to using sumac for spice. And the bread is actually mostly acorn flour."
Suddenly, Hasan gasped and slapped his head, gesturing to the bread.
"Crap!" he exclaimed. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Strange."
"About what?"
"I used deer fat to fry the bread. I can't believe I forgot."
Stephen kept chewing, too hungry to be disturbed. "I was wondering why it tasted a little gamey. It's fine, though, no worries. Everything's delicious as usual, Hasan."
Hasan beamed proudly, then went to serve everyone else their dinners. Stephen soaked up the curry with the fried acorn bread and stuffed it all in his mouth. If he got to eat like this often, then maybe staying in that universe forever wouldn't be so bad. The thought, though doused in a helping of pain-relieving alcoholic stupor, still stung unexpectedly. He wished he could have called his parents one more time before this had happened.
"You all right, Stephen?" asked Loki through a mouthful of venison.
"Fine," he replied, making an effort to smile.
Loki nodded back wordlessly, but seemed concerned, as if he didn't believe him one bit. Nor should he. Those thoughts had come throughout the time he'd been there, slapping him with the unhappy reality that there was truly no way home, no matter how much he'd tried to distract himself by helping Loki and the other Tvanians. There wasn't much else he could do, though. Stephen's usual method of processing grief was to work double and triple shifts at the hospital, or go a little crazy trying to figure out how to fix things, like he had when he broke his hands. Neither was an option, here. Grief kept flicking painful memories and regrets at him at the most inopportune times.
After a while, the excitement of dinner faded into the calm quiet of the community eating together, talking over each other, laughing and still drinking the seemingly endless supply of alcohol.
Suddenly, Loki stood and banged his carved stick on the table like a gavel, making everyone else jump and the plates shudder.
"Everyone! Everyone!" he shouted, and the village quieted and faced their leader.
Loki raised his chin with all the dignity his birthright had bestowed upon him, gazing at his subjects and waiting for their complete, undivided attention. He raised both arms into the air and made his proclamation.
"My people," he said, his strong, commanding voice coming back to him. He gave the smallest glance to Stephen, then continued. "It's time to hear the tale of Tvania!"
With that, he thrust his arms forward and cast an enormous illusion spell around the campfire to a chorus of astonished yelps and delighted laughter and applause. Stephen stood up instinctively and marveled at the wonder before him. Loki had made a three dimensional, moving, lifelike holographic replica of what Stephen could only assume was the TVA, which slowly spun around the campfire, backlit by the flames. Every UFO shaped building and pipe and hallway and person was painstakingly recreated in miniature, down to the matchbook sized propaganda posters on the walls. Hundreds of people, their tiny visages walking around the magical hologram, milled about in their suits and uniforms as if they were really working. In the middle, glittering in the firelight, stood a statue of a man which had to be the Timekeeper that Mobius had explained to him before. The statue, which reached the very top of the entire illusion, must have been utterly massive in real life, given that the little people were barely as tall as his finger.
A couple of curious people stretched out their hands to touch the mirage, their hands reaching through the illusion and making it glitter with the green-colored energy that Loki used for his magic.
Stephen was completely amazed. He had made magical disguises and illusions before, but he couldn't even imagine that level of detail, not to mention bring it to life with so many moving parts.
Loki spoke proudly, theatrically, as if he were on a stage as he walked around his magical creation. "We begin at the beginning, once upon the plains of Ymir, as the Asgardians say. And at our beginning was the death of He Who Remains, and the birth of Kang, the Timekeeper … "
Loki told the tale with as much pomp and melodramatics as Stephen would expect, but he was just as transfixed as everyone else. Loki changed the scene behind him to tell his story, how he and Sylvie were brainwashed, how he met and befriended another variant of Mobius and fell back in love with Sylvie, to much cooing from the audience and lots of embarrassed eye rolls from his wife. At the mention of Miss Minutes, Loki would project a ridiculously bug-eyed cartoon clock creature above the campfire that mimicked his overdramatic, campy movement and mocking accent. Like a Punch and Judy show, everyone in the audience knew what to do. They jeered and booed and threw deer bones at the hologram and into the fire.
"Well gosh golly gee, everybody," said Loki with an overwrought Southern accent as the audience playfully heckled him, "I only forcibly reeducated a hundred thousand people to do the Timekeeper's biddin'! Why are y'all mad at me for?"
Stephen and Christine gave each other a look, then followed suit, Stephen borrowing some of Loki's bones to throw at the cartoon. They'd never even seen Miss Minutes in real life, but it was cathartic to join in, nonetheless.
Loki told of the people he'd met, some of which were there, some of whom he'd sadly note their bravery at their passing. Each mention got a quiet murmur of recognition from the crowd. Stephen got the notion long before the end of the story that thousands and thousands of members of the TVA didn't make it out alive.
Finally, he reached the climax of the tale-their daring escape, and the all out war that ensued. Hundreds of tiny, angry holograms tore the TVA to pieces, the spindly towers crumbled, and last, to a cry of victory from the crowd, the statue of Kang toppled and tore through part of the imaginary complex. Stephen and Christine clapped with them, feeling the waves of triumph and pride swelling in the crowd. It was like being in the middle of a heated football game: even if you weren't playing, it was impossible not to join in cheering on your side.
Slowly, as he spoke, Loki made the ruined TVA disappear, person by person, piece by piece.
"And that brings us to here," he said, gesturing to everyone gathered around the fire. "It brings us to now. It brings us to the future," he gestured to Danae, her partner Chuluun by her side, a hand on her huge, pregnant belly. "And it brings us to us. We are more than the TVA ever turned us into, more than what they did to us. We are not refugees from a despotic, tyrannical regime. We are our own people, torn from our former homes and past lives, but free, and united, and proud. Long live Tvania!"
That made another wave of cheers and whistles ripple through the crowd. Maybe it was the alcohol, or more likely Loki's fabulously persuasive storytelling, but for a fleeting moment, Stephen truly felt part of it, not just an onlooker on the sidelines as he encouraged his team.
"Next year," he went on as the applause died down, "I promise to add the tale of … well I haven't named it or blocked it out yet … the tale of my horror, and the bravery of the people who dared save our people from it." He gestured broadly to the table, but looked straight at Stephen as he spoke.
"Now, let's pick these deer to the bone, drink the rest of the mead, and sleep it off tomorrow, eh? Compliments to the chef!"
Loki returned to the table as the crowd settled down again. He drained the last of his mead, kissed his wife on the forehead, then whispered something in her ear and wandered off into the woods, probably to answer the call of the wild.
After a while, the campfire was starting to die, and fewer people were willing to toss logs into it to keep it going. Loki hadn't returned. Sylvie would occasionally glance behind her into the forest, her brow furrowed with worry. Stephen was beginning to worry as well, and felt the call of the wild himself, so got up to go into the woods in the same direction Loki had headed. He winced in pain with every step from his sore leg, and hoped to god the wound wasn't going to need antibiotics. There sure as hell weren't going to be any around.
It didn't take long to find him. Stephen saw a thin figure in the darkness leaning with his back to a tree, lit by the starlight and a tiny sliver of moon in the clear sky. He wasn't relieving himself, just staring up at the stars, his goat horn crown hanging on the end of his forked staff.
Loki nodded to Stephen as he approached. "Doctor," he greeted him quietly, then went back to looking at the stars.
"You asked me earlier if I was all right," said Stephen. "I have the same question for you."
Loki stared blankly, as if he truly wanted to respond in sincerity, but a flash of a smirk come across his face instead.
"I was just thinking, if they're not going to name this realm Lokgard, then I really deserve something here in my name, right? Then I had an idea. Wednesday is Odin's day, Thursday is Thor's day, Friday is Frigga's day, so why don't I get Saturday? Saturday should be Lokisday, from now on. I'll bring that to a vote."
Stephen rolled his eyes. "That's not really what you're thinking about, is it?"
Loki's smirk fell away and he shrugged and sighed.
"I was just thinking about the humans here," he said, gently swinging his crown back and forth on the end of his staff, like the pendulum of a clock. "How much they need me. Or if they actually need me at all. There's nothing to fight here, and they seem to have done just fine while I was sick."
"Humans tend to do pretty okay on their own in small groups," said Stephen. "When you have enormous countries with battling politics and different lifestyles, that's when things get kind of hairy."
"All the humans here are going to die in a few decades." Loki surprised Stephen with his candidness. "Then their children will have children and they'll die in less than a century, and so on and so on. Stephen, if nothing else kills me before my time, I will live through about one hundred and fifty more generations of humans, give or take. It's just … a lot. And what will I be to them then? A true god? If you'd told me that a year or two ago, I would have been ecstatic, but now, it feels … it feels … "
"Like a lot of responsibility?"
"Yes," he said, with a labored sigh.
"I think you're up to it, Loki," said Stephen, stepping closer. "You're a prince, after all. You've proven yourself. You're brave enough and clever enough, and now, maybe wise enough to live up to the title."
"That was my brother's job," he replied, with a bit of resentment edging into his voice. "He was literally born for it. I was just the spare, if that."
Stephen chuckled. "You know Thor isn't even running New Asgard right now?"
"What?" blurted Loki. "Who is, then?"
"Her name's Valkyrie, I think."
"He left a Valkyrie in charge of Asgard?" said Loki, standing up straight, shocked. "That's like … like making a soldier the President of the United States, with no training or anything. That's ridiculous! A Valkyrie … absurd …" he repeated quietly, shaking his head.
"She's apparently doing a great job," Stephen said. "Honestly, I think leadership is earned, no matter if you were born for it, or if it gets thrust unexpectedly on you out of nowhere. You earned the glory, and everything else that comes with it."
Loki gave Stephen a genuine smile, then haphazardly placed his horned crown back on his head and shoved Stephen very gently with his staff. His breath smelled heavily of alcohol, as he was sure his own did, too.
"You're not allowed to change my life every few weeks or so," Loki said. "I'm nipping that in the bud. You're only allowed to give me … let's see … six life changing epiphanies per year. No more."
"How will I manage?" asked Stephen teasingly. "We should probably go back to the village. Your wife is worried about you."
"When isn't she?"
As they turned to go back to the campfire, running footsteps crashed through the forest towards them. They couldn't make out who it was at first in the scant starlight, but then they saw it was Danae's partner, Chuluun. The Asian man panted heavily, gasping for breath with his hands on his knees.
"Doctor-" he began, then exploded into a coughing fit.
"What is it Casey-I mean, Chuluun?" asked Loki.
"Danae … the baby's coming!"
Just then, a pained shout of a woman echoed down from the village. The three men took off running as fast as they could up the forested slope.
Christine was right by her side, of course, with dozens of people crowding around them.
"Make room!" shouted Loki, and everyone obeyed without hesitation. Danae sweated and moaned miserably, her dress wet with her water that had just broke.
Stephen knelt down to hold her hand and spoke to her in a comforting tone.
"Is this your first?"
She panted and nodded, then winced at another wave of contractions.
Stephen looked to Christine, sitting by Danae's side and holding her other hand as Danae rocked back and forth on the log in pain.
"Have you done any vaginal deliveries, Christine?"
"A few, actually," she said, to his surprise. On the other hand, she was an ER doc: they saw just about everything there was to see at a hospital.
"I've only done one emergency C-section," he said. "You want the knife?"
She smirked at him. "I would have grabbed it from you, anyway."
Another loud moan from Danae wiped the smirk off of her face. Stephen helped Danae stand, with assistance from Chuluun.
"Let's get you somewhere comfortable, okay?" he said, then spoke to Loki. "Have someone bring hot water and clean blankets and towels, as many as you can spare."
Loki nodded, then turned to the crowd.
"You heard the man!" he said, clapping briskly, as if ordering servants. "Chop, chop! Hot water, blankets!" A few people glanced at each other, then hurried off to gather supplies.
"Where's your house?" Christine asked Chuluun, and he wordlessly nodded towards a small house with a caving roof. Christine walked briskly ahead of them, with the same energy and professional determination he'd seen a hundred times before, working with her at Metro-General. She had this, and she knew it, as long as mother nature cooperated.
Stephen lit the bedroom with magical globes of light, a Tvanian brought buckets of water and blankets, and they all prepared for a very long, tiring night.