The Wanderer
By Rey

Loki Odinson has roamed all of Asgard. Loki Odinson has even explored seven other greater realms and beyond. But Loki Odinson, in all his life, has never even contemplated visiting Jötunheim. Now, though, as he needs an immediate and thoroughly occupying distraction from the announcement of Thor's upcoming coronation…. Well, wreaking havoc in the land of the monsters will not hurt anybody, will it?

Only, who end up messing with whom?

Story tags: Pre-Thor (2011), POV Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki Does What He Wants, Mama Laufey, Unexpected Family Relations, internalised sexism, Internalised Racism, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jötunheim, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jotunn Culture, Age Difference

Author's note: Here's a rather fluffy one-shot to hopefully brighten up your New Year's Day despite the restrictions put because of the pandemic. Let's hope this storm quickly ends, and ends well for us all, but for now please enjoy this contribution of mine to the fic pool. - Rey

Story notes: This story is set 100 years before Thor's coronation ceremony. There are instances of another language spoken in the story (Ýmska, as in the glossary below) and semi-adapted to "English" as Loki speaks it. Also, in Rey-verse, to the æsir, Loki is nearly of age by Thor's coronation ceremony, so now he is only somewhat younger; but to the jötnar, he is still pretty much a child – about 8 or 9 years old in human modern standard.

Glossary of Ýmska:
Amma: Mum
Aslakonnar: Your Highness
ðolakka: theirs (singular, pronoun specific for addressing the Monarch in a 3rd-person point of view)
ðolu: they (singular, pronoun specific for addressing the Monarch in a 3rd-person point of view)
Konnar: Monarch

Started on: 13th October 2019 at 03:25 PM
Finished on: 31st December 2020 at 03:30 PM

O-O-O-O

Heavily cloaked both in seiðr and warm clothes, and heavily armed with all kinds of blades and triggerable spells, Loki Odinson steps off of a Pathway onto Jötunheim, the land of the fearsome and brutish frost giants. Guided by the information he gleaned from his surreptitious research in the palace's library and his father's personal book collection about Jötunheim and its inhabitants, he then looks round for a recognisable landmark.

For a recognisable enemy to fight, as well, admittedly, for him to pour his frustration onto. Because his father, the King of Asgard, has declared Thor to be crowned king within the next century, despite all the reasons not to yet, which he has been attempting to show his father in various occasions. The weight of a second son's words is not much, he knows it well from observing all the family interactions on Asgard, noble and peasant alike, but still!

This jaunt is beginning to frustrate him more, however, it seems, instead of less. What he sees all round him are only rock piles, ice formations, some lichen, a few rugged monoliths, and mounds of coarse, not-so-white snow. There is not even a small animal around!

He plods determinedly along a path that seems to be… well, a path, really, instead of a cliff of various sizes, a series of snow mounds taller than he is, or a jagged pile of tumbled rock. Above him, a dim, pallid blue sky stretches from empty horizon to empty horizon, with the sun only a pinprick somewhere overhead.

However, even as the sky turns into a murky brown and the distant sun is no longer perched anywhere there, replaced by two moons of differing colours, and even after he has shortened the way by line-of-sight teleportation, there is still nothing to find.

Well, there are a bit more lichen, a bit less detritus, a bit more touch of civilisation on and to either side of the path with how neater everything looks, but the only movements that he sees, feels and senses are his own and an occasional breeze.

`What a pitiful realm,` he grouses tiredly. His earlier eagerness and bloodlust have bled off unsatisfied, leaving him hollow and chilled from inside. Apathy begins to set in, just so.

He decides to teleport himself back to the mouth of the Pathway he emerged from, then, to head off further misery, although he does not know where he will go next: to the ever-changing Midgard, outside of the Nine, or slinking back home.

Thankfully… or not, given his new state of mind… somebody suddenly materialises somewhere ahead, just before he teleports away.

The figure is not that of a jötun, however.

They are possessed of remarkably similar physique and features to his, in fact: fair skin, black hair, lean built, and androgynous appearance.

And they are looking directly at him, even though he has cloaked himself to blend with his environment.

`Did they detect my seiðr? Hmm, a mage, then. How interesting,` he muses. He has so rarely sparred with seiðr against another mage, let alone fought….

Hastening forth, he prepares himself in mind and seiðr for the probable battle. But nonetheless, he greets the other mage cordially, as is his wont, "Hail! Who might you be?"

His greeter – soon to be his challenger, most likely – raises an eloquent eyebrow. "Someone who is very interested about why my own kind is garbed in Asgardian clothes and seems ready to do a one-person invasion," they remark wryly. Their voice is mild, but firm for all that, and as androgynous as they look – as Loki himself looks and sounds.

"Your own kind?" Loki raises his own eyebrow as he nears the other mage, stopping just beyond an easy range for both of them to send spells to each other.

"A young one at that," the other agrees, nodding, sounding more intrigued and… concerned?

The other eyebrow joins the first, high on Loki's brow. "I am not that much shorter than you are. So you are not much older than I am, are you?" he points out humorously, his eagerness to fight once more ebbing. And indeed, now standing just a spell's throw away, he can see clearly that he measures as high as the stranger's shoulders.

And the stranger, garbed in a strange, somewhat glittery, slim-fit bodysuit the colour of their eyes – deep blue-grey – that does not cover their limbs, quirks a small smile to that quip. It is not demeaning at all, but Loki still finds the amusement clearly conveyed in it rather off-putting.

Not off-putting enough to fuel a fight, however, sadly.

And, "Who might you be, yourself?" the other mage cuts into Loki's internal grumbling before it can manifest outwardly in any way.

"A wanderer," is Loki's simple, glib answer, in retaliation, daring the other mage to ask more and be denied.

But, for that, he gets a small smile in response, again.

Fortunately, both for Loki himself and the other mage, the latter then adds, dryly and yet sincerely, "Should you tone down your hostility, I would welcome you in my temporary nest for some rest, Wanderer, as you seem to have travelled all through the night."

"All through the night?" Loki echoes, baffled, even as he nullifies his most aggressive triggerable spell arrays. And then he remembers that, on Jötunheim and for the jötnar, the night – when the moons shine – is called "day" instead.

"Oh," he mumbles to himself.

"Oh indeed," the other mage remarks in an even drier tone as they join him, walking companionably side by side with him down the same path he has been taking all this while, which turns out to have been an undetectable, triggerable maze because now it is suddenly bordered by gigantic trees and carpeted by delightfully soft moss. Then, in a more serious and probing tone, "You have been gone quite a long time for such a young one, if you have forgotten even the natural order of things here."

Loki side-eyes them but does not deign them a response. Instead, he asks about where they are going, and what the other mage's "temporary nest" is like.

And the other mage does answer him, lengthily and elaborately and energetically, and mostly sincerely: The both of them are going to a nearby fruit plantation where the other mage is a temporary guard, this mage-guard had night duty and is finishing their shift now, hence they have a temporary nest here and can show Loki around or invite him for some rest, Loki can wheedle for some fruit – their words, not his – from the plantation's owner after he is well rested, the both of them might play some board-game should Loki feel unable to rest yet…. There are so many interesting things, and, unknowingly, Loki is enthralled by it.

By the time the both of them are ensconced on the edge of the other mage's temporary nest – a mass of furs and cushions encased in sturdy if soft fabric, sheltered in a nook made by tree trunks under a roof made of a whole block of ice – he can almost forget where he is and what the other mage might be despite their disguise. Coupled with the other mage's calm, mild disposition, it makes it easy – too easy, perhaps, even – for him to accept their offer of playing a board-game, then exchanging short, funny songs, then sharing funny anecdotes. All the while, they ply him with refreshing ice water in big stone cups, a rather delightful dish called sweet snow, and strips of delicious jerky.

They even offer him their name – Lesha – after the both of them agree to take a rest for a while, so Loki offers them his own name in exchange, both as a courtesy and as payment for their shocking, quite unlooked-for hospitality.

But they end up not sleeping, just lying curled up in the nest facing each other, because of the name – his name.

"Do you know that you have a special name, not only lovely?" Lesha asks, and Loki cannot help but pursue the matter. So they talk about the Loptr and Loki flowers native to this realm which are hard to find in the wild and harder to cultivate, the meanings assigned to the names based on the atributes and habbits of the flowers, the fact that these names are usually only assigned to twins born to the royal line, and, briefly, with evident pain and sorrow in their voice and expression, the fact that Laufey was carrying twins during the last war.

"Children are traditionally named only after a year out of the womb," they explain heavily, "but Konnar Laufey was so eager. And, in any case, few knew that ðolu wished to name the then-unborn twins Loptr and Loki."

Loki did read that the jötnar are ergi creatures, but he thought it was more speculation than fact, given how fearsome and powerful the frost giants purportedly are. But to know that even their king is a child-carrying argr who was eager to be a mother….

He shifts uncomfortably in his nook of the nest, but at last lets out the question nagging him anyway: "Why did… Konnar Laufey… carry children? Why not the queen? Why was he so eager to carry children?"

Lesha scrunches up their nose. "You have been cut out of Ýmirheim, it seems, not only gone for too long," they grumble. Then, ticking their fingers one by one to emphasise each point, thankfully in a way that suggests no eminent seiðr-born attack, as their fingers are moved slowly and faced towards their own person, they explain, "Firstly, if you must assign a gendered pronoun, please assign a female pronoun to us, especially the Monarch. Secondly, why would Konnar Laufey not rejoice in having children of ðolakka own womb? Those children would be ðolakka, after all, and inheriters of the throne to boot. And," they sit up, emphasising the point further it seems, "should you ever meet the Monarch yourself, please do not talk about the children if you can; or, if you cannot, please do not use such a scornful tone, child. By Ýmir, I have begun to greatly like you, and I do not wish to see or know that you have been eviserated by the Monarch in ðolakka grief."

Loki scrunches up his own nose and reluctantly peels himself off of his comfortable nook of cushions and furs. "So… the children… they are no longer…."

His throat clicks shut, as he beholds the raw grief in Lesha's eyes.

"One died, while the other was kidnapped and lost until now," they answer his unspoken question, curtly. Then they murmur in a quieter tone, their gaze faraway, "We blamed ourselves. We still do. But the Monarch blames ðolakka own self the most." Their voice quietens still when they finish with, "Year by year, we mourn the losses. And year by year, the losses hit the Monarch harder and harder."

Loki does not know what possesses him when he offers to pay his respects to Laufey, afterwards, but he does, and the look of terrible hope in Lesha's eyes prevents him from withdrawing his offer.

"I…," the mage-guard stutters, then rallies determinedly, "You are somehow familiar in my senses, child, but I do not recognise you, although those sensess tell me that I should have recognised you. I would have never invited you to my nest, otherwise."

The joking tone tagged to the last of their statement falls flat. But, in any case, they recover quickly, desperately, and seem to steel themself.

Loki knows why, in the next instance, as they ask – nay, plead, "Would you let me check over you for wards not of your own making? To see if somebody has cloaked you your whole life from those who would recognise who you are? You…. Well, you cannot present yourself in your cloaked state to the Monarch, regardless."

Trepidation feels Loki's mind and sets his heart a-pounding. It is not caused by the request, however, regardless of how intrusive it is for a near-total stranger to ask of him.

"You know that I am not one of the children carried by the Monarch, do you not?" he asks retorically to prolong the time he has to decide one way or another. "I was born on Asgard. Maybe one of my parents held some interest about this place, before the war." It is strangely not a distasteful thought, now, neither the notion that his name may have stemmed from a flower of all things. It is certainly a better thought than regarding himself as jötun, let alone as somebody other than the second child of Odin and Frigga of Asgard.

"I told you," Lesha plods on, "you are yet cloaked, somehow, and you cannot go to Konnar Laufey as is, regardless of my wishes or yours. I am not an incompetent mage – none of us are – and I believe you know that this will not hurt you if done slowly and carefully."

`No, it will not hurt, not physically,` Loki acknowledges the point, grudgingly, then adds to himself, `But am I ready?` He thinks he has an inkling of what he must be ready for, but he continues to shy away from it.

Still, in the end, his own thirst for knowledge is more powerful than anything else, even his increasing dread.

"Do it," he manages, at length, and the permission sounds like a death nell in his own ears.

It feels even more so as he himself feels the gently questing tendral of the other mage's seiðr touch upon something not of himself, something that he never knew has always been there.

And poignant joy is clearly writ upon Lesha's visage when the thing – an identity-cloaking ward, indeed – unravels, freeing him from a burden he never knew nor thought he bore.

"Aslakonnar," the mage-guard murmurs, then, still seated, bows from the waist with their hands linked at the small of their back and their neck tilted to the side to expose their throat.

Loki's world breaks, just so.

Reality feels so, so distant, and his senses likewise. Vaguely, he is aware that Lesha's seiðr now bathes him, coaxing his instincts to adopt a slightly different, much more natural form. Vaguely, he is also aware that the mage-guard picks him up and carries him elsewhere by teleportation.

Reality comes back, it feels, only when it is too late.

Far too late.

Because now Loki finds himself ensconced in the lap of a… blue-skinned being.

A blue-skinned being whose presence is instinctively and viscerally familiar, likewise their power, which is contentedly soaking him, wrapped round him, revelling in his own presence, in his form cradled in their arms.

And, when his reeling senses manage to catch up with reality, he finds that a jötun is standing in guard across from him – across from them – at the door, quirking a small smile that he has grown accustomed to all this while when their eyes meet.

"Welcome home, Wanderer," they – Lesha – say, with a quiet joy vacant in many of Asgard's guards regard of him when addressing him.

"Home," Loki echoes, testing the word in his tongue like tasting a new, foreign delicacy he picked up in one of his wanderings – not only for its flavour and texture, but also for its possible incompatibility with his makeup.

And, "Home," his captor agrees hummingly, with bittersweet peace and contentment, and also with unconditional acceptance that he feels he has received only from his mother – no, Frigga – in all his life.

"You promised me a tour of the plantation," he forces himself to address Lesha, not… this one. He is running away from what is most important at present, he knows, and his captor knows it as well, but he does it anyhow.

And his captor lets it.

But sadly, Lesha seems to know what he is doing, because they point out in a kind, reasonable, even somewhat humorous tone that he currently despises so, "The wheedling quest for bountiful fruit would be much more successful should Aslakonnar go with Aslakonnar's mother instead of Lesha."

"Mother," Loki repeats, half laughing and half sobbing.

And, as if in response, or maybe it is, his captor stands up, with him still a captive in their arms, and, in a wavering voice caught between the same extremes of emotions, they murmur, "Let us go, then. Amma… Amma shall wheedle some fruit for Loé from Elder Lýða."

The statement is ridiculous in the extreme, especially if the facts are taken into account – and Loki does take them into account. But… at the same time….

At the same time, he has never felt more settled, more himself.

In all his wanderings, he never found it.

Now he does.