Book improved markedly once the Avengers began taking shifts at his side during the night. The hidden nightmares didn't appear to bother him any further and before long he was mingling with the others and spending far less of his time in bed. This also meant that his questions about Loki's past were increasing, as were his requests for demonstrations of magic. With a captive—and appreciative— audience, Loki was only too happy to comply despite lacking the reserves for anything truly spectacular.
He splashed the ink onto the page as Book leaned across the table. A greenish sheen flashed over the sheet as the ink soaked into the paper. Then it began to move. Flowing in darting lines through the fibers of the page. A form emerged from their intersections, growing ever clearer. Book's hands flew to his mouth as he stifled a snicker. The Thor sketch scowled back at him, wads of the flowing dress he was wearing tangled around his legs, bearded face partially draped by a veil.
"That cut does nothing for him," wheezed Book, tears squeezing from the corner of his eyes. He wrapped his arms around himself, shaking. "How…how did you manage that?!"
"What's the joke?" asked Steve as he appeared in the doorway.
"You gotta see this, Cap!" said Book.
The Captain wandered over and glanced down at the drawing. He fought a smile, having to cough to hide it. "Is this the Asgardian version of embarrassing baby pictures?"
"Embarrassing what?" asked Stark.
"Where did you come from?" asked Steve as he glanced over his shoulder.
"Someone said embarrassing—so I'm here." He craned over from the opposite side of the table. "Think if we got him drunk enough he'd do that again?"
Book tugged on Loki's sleeve. "Come on, I wanna see you guys when you were kids."
"They weren't ever kids. Sprang full grown from the ground," said Stark.
Loki pretended to consider it for a moment, then gave a shrug. Let them see that their golden prince has always cast a great shadow. The image came readily enough to mind. He'd seen this particular moment every time he had visited Frigga's private chambers. She had kept the shadowlight image on her dresser next to a golden mirror and ever-blooming Vanaheim Orchid. When he closed his eyes he could see it perfectly.
Long fingers waved across the page. Ink pooled and ran, cutting up into the image of two boys. It wasn't the staid and dignified portrait it was meant to be all those hundreds of years ago when the incident occurred. The Vanir painter was taking the equivalent of snapshots before he attempted the monumental task of containing the exuberance of two young boys for a portrait sitting. While the royal painting hung in the archives, his mother had been more fond of this image of the young princes. The broader of the two had apparently leapt at the other, throwing a possessive arm around the slighter one and knocking him nearly out of the frame. Although slightly taller, the young Loki hunched under the weight of his brother's arm. He didn't bear the broad arrogant grin that Thor did. His was an expression of shyness, the quiet acceptance of a second son.
Loki settled back to watch the Avengers' reactions as they saw that Thor's arrogance and need to be first in the minds of all ran deep. Even at such a tender age, see how your would-be hero placed himself first.
"You look happy," said Rogers.
Startled, Loki's gaze flicked to the side. Happy? That was hardly what he'd expected. He glanced back at the ink. Happy? With a frown he tried to strip away the layers upon layers of bitterness and anger that poisoned all aspects of his childhood and look on it as they did. He couldn't quite manage it, but he was a good enough pretender that he could almost see how they would interpret Thor's gesture as mere boyish exuberance. A gesture of brotherly companionship rather than possession and grandstanding. Peering more closely at the distant reflection of his younger face, he could see the smile was perhaps more reserved than shy. And he knew himself too well to be deluded as to what the mischief in his eyes promised.
The ink smeared across the page into an unrecognizable splatter with the wave of his hand. "I was quite the accomplished liar even then. We do almost look brotherly, don't we?" He dripped just enough venom into the words to dissuade Rogers of whatever sentimental notions he was harboring.
"Let's have a look at this She you were talking about," Book said quickly, cutting off what Stark was going to say and neatly allowing the attention to go somewhere other than Loki's childhood. It was nicely done, if abruptly executed.
The ink morphed again, smears and smattered droplets forming into the tattered husk of his patron. It wicked up to the face, curling around the slit of a mouth and dropping into two deep glistening pools. The two holes of wet blackness stared back at him, as taunting as ever, twin pools of ink.
Loki tensed. Ink.
Black, glossy ink.
A laugh began to build him, grating out in a harsh burst. He knew those eyes and their blackness. It clicked. So many things suddenly illuminated. Her eyes—they were like wet ink blots. He knew Her now.
"Do come out," he said, throwing his head back as he gestured around the room, "grace us with your presence."
"Box-o-cats is back," murmured Stark. "I'll go poke Bruce."
Steve grabbed his arm as he was making to leave. "Hold up."
"I know you now, my lady." He bowed extravagantly. "We welcome you, Skuld of the Norns."
The air rippled briefly in the middle of the room, and out of the variance appeared a towering figure, lean and immensely other.
"How slow you are, trickster," said Skuld. Her dark, wet gaze slid across the assembled mortals, the line of her mouth perhaps hiding a smile as she took in their slack jawed greeting. She had shed her disguise and stood before them as she was, ancient and uncanny.
Everything about her was elongated, as if pulled to a point. Her spindle limbs tapered to small feet, too delicate to have truly held her weight. Beneath her pale, grey tinged skin, black veins pulsed at her temples and down her arms. The network darkened and grew into a complex of branching vines around her hands, merging until her long fingers turned completely black. Wild, white hair burst from her high forehead and fell like a cape around her shoulders. Long feathers sprouted from the bush, flaring in all directions. From each feather ran a streak of black that deepened and spread down to the tips of her hair. White completely consumed by black.
Her gossamer dress hung from her knobby frame in sheer tatters. Layers of misty fabric floated about her at the slightest movement. It melded with her skin, seemingly a part of her.
Her face mimicked an Aesir one in an eerie attempt. There was the mouth, the nose, the eyes. But the mouth was little more than a slit, the nose a shallow ridge punctuated by two pinpricks. One look at her eyes shattered any Aesir—or human—semblance. With no lashes or brows, they were more like someone had poured the blackest, glossiest of paints into two deep saucers.
Steve slid toward Book protectively. Stark tilted his head inquisitively, perfectly at ease and bearing an expression of acceptance that this was his life now. Naturally he spoke first, "Yeah, sure, why not. You can never have too many Norse myths under one roof." He gestured off-handedly at the Norn. "And who exactly are you supposed to be? Goddess of Tim Burton films?"
"Tony," warned Steve as Skuld swiveled her long neck, slightly more than was natural, to regard them unblinkingly.
She took two gliding steps across the room, not really seeming to connect with the floor at all. She placed a delicate, black-tipped finger against Stark's face, running the back of her nail along his beard. "Charming words. I wonder what they are meant to conceal? Fear? Weakness? Self-loathing?" She tapped his cheek. "Should I tell you?"
The expression on the billionaire's face never faltered, but it did tighten around the edges. He shrugged and looked as if he would have gone on if Book hadn't interrupted.
"Loki…is she?" Book stopped as Skuld turned toward him.
"The youngest of the Fates," said Loki, "Skuld the Scrivener."
"It is good to see you face to face little godling," said Skuld, her voice strangely hollow, like the whispering of a deep-toned woodwind. "I had begun to despair of you."
Loki gave quick dip of his head in self-depreciating acknowledgement. He had the look of someone who wanted to laugh and curse and run all at once. "I had not thought to garner the attention of a one such as yourself so—directly."
Skuld gave a long, languid blink, as if reminding herself that most beings found it unnerving to be stared at so unwaveringly. The deliberateness of it completely undid any semblance of normalcy she might have striven for. "There are few we are more interested in."
"Pardon me, ma'am," said Captain Rogers.
Loki winced. He said it the same way he would have if addressing a mere Midgardian.
"What is it, man out of time?" she asked, a hint of amusement running through her words.
"Do I understand correctly that you are the one responsible for Loki's escape and the condition he's been in?"
"I am."
"And you thought that was a good idea?" Stark burst out, unable to contain himself any longer.
Book edged a bit more behind Loki as Skuld once more turned unnervingly toward Stark. Loki glanced a bit behind him to catch Book's wary expression. The boy made a few quick signs. Loki shook his head subtly. No, he doubted that the Norn would actually rip Stark apart, though, one could always hope.
The Norn arched her neck to peer down at the much shorter human. "So selfish and yet endowed with so very little sense of self preservation. Verthandi must have such fun untangling the threads of your life."
From the tone, Loki imagined the Weaver had no such joy in dealing with Stark's thread in the tapestry of fate.
"All will be reveled in time little mortal, but there is one who has more claim upon my answers than you." She flicked her gaze around the room, letting it rest briefly on Book before catching Loki's eye. "Somewhere with fewer distractions I think."
Skuld plucked a quill from her hair and drew the point along her pale arm. Black blood welled up, wicking into the nib. With a flourish, she traced onyx letters into the air. The runes glinted, flashing into whiteness.
Loki blinked against the glare.
The lodge's living room was gone, replaced by the star-flung darkness of the universe. Through all and between all pulsed the branches of the world tree, cradling the nine realms in its limbs. Eyes without magic would have seen only the spiraling universes turning in their courses, unaware of the tender branches holding them aloft, perched over the clawed nothing of the void. He shuddered.
Instead he focused on the broad net of limbs on which they stood. He knew better than to stray into questions of how he breathed, or even stood upon the branches—that way lay madness. Even the magic within him deceived, not really revealing the World Tree to him but translating it into what his mind could comprehend. He wondered what it was the Norn saw.
"Now we may speak." Skuld laced her fingers together and settled herself against a crook in the tree. "You have questions."
Loki wetted his lips. "Grievances."
Skuld's eyes widened, but she said nothing.
"I dislike being toyed with." He spoke the words slowly. To one other than a Norn there would have been menace in them. "Why conceal yourself for so long in the guise of an aid and then an enemy? Why present yourself at all?"
"You question my methods?"
"Your reasoning."
"I have not concealed that. From the start, I told you. You had strayed from your purpose."
Loki winced. "Then the visions I saw…they are fixed? They are true?"
"Or very like. Did you doubt it?" She seemed curious in a distant, reserved fashion.
Bitterness welled within him. "Would I have bartered with the Chitauri if I did? What of a thousand choices would I not have made if I doubted for an instant that my fate was not set?" He glanced at her shrewdly. "But you stray from the point."
She gave a thin imitation of a smile. "Your destination was fixed, but your path unto it was not. Urd dreams the life of the World Tree and all that dwell in her branches or are cast in her shadow. Verthandi then weaves the fates of men so that they may arrive where they are meant to. I record their stories."
Loki did not miss the familiar flash of bitter, overshadowed envy. So then, even the Norns could feel unvalued. He held his peace and waited for the Norn to continue.
She stroked the branch beside her, fingers leaving trailing sparks of light beneath Yggdrasil's skin. "Urd dreamt the end days—I do not need to tell you the terror that she foresaw. And at its heart you stood." She regarded him with a strange expression he might have called a smile. "We did not know you then, the dream of your birth had not yet come. For thousands upon thousands of your years we knew only the face and figure of our destruction. And you were hated."
"It seems to be my gift." It was said without bitterness, almost with amusement.
"When Urd finally saw your coming birth, we began our work, laying the foundations of your life such that it would lead ever closer to the final scene of all things. It was our revenge to cast your way with nettles and betrayers."
She paused. "But when you stepped into the world of the now…I questioned. Is it little wonder that Yggdrasil's chosen one would be unlike any other? When I first beheld you enfleshed I read the possibility of greatness in you and saw a heart capable of great depths of feeling. You amused me, Trickster, constantly veering from the path we set you on, or twisting it in ways we had not foreseen—you ought not to have been able to do that." Her face hardened. "But time and again we led you back. Never before have we so pushed a mortal. Verthandi was ever at your thread, arranging all about it so that you would play the role she had set out for you." Her voice became bland. "She was aided by your own penchant for self destructive choices."
Loki wasn't looking at her, his back turned in rigid indifference. "How? How did you influence my actions?" he asked as he stared out at the swirling galaxies.
"We knew you. Your inner thoughts, fears, aspirations, failings. We had only to encourage those around you to say the wrong thing at just the wrong time, whisper a passing thought to send your mind leaping to the wrong conclusion."
His reserve snapped as he whirled on the Norn. It wasn't in rage, but a brittle, almost manic desperation. "Then, all of this. I am but a puppet. All this time, none of this is my doing."
Like a tidal swell, Skuld towered above Loki, a creature of ancient secrets and knowledge. "Do not dare to excuse your actions. Every step, every hissing lie, every knife twist was your own. We can force you to do nothing. A better man than you would have resisted. But not you, you embraced the bitterness, cherished it and allowed it to flourish. Though we laid out the path, you chose to walk upon it."
Loki backed away beneath the Norn's fury. "You gave me little choice but to become what I am!"
Suddenly Skuld's rasping hand was cupped to Loki's cheek. "And I gave you every chance to turn away." Her voice came softly, full of regret. "Do you know the tale I could have told if you would only have had the strength to trust in your brother's imperfect love?"
An icy cold bloomed at Loki's core, sickening and heavy. Could he have turned away? An image of Thor begging atop Stark Tower flashed across his mind. Pleading to aid him. Loki remembered being on the very edge of agreeing. Then the iron cage of his destiny reared before him and he had known that he could not turn from the fate he had seen.
The Norn slid backwards as Loki turned his face away. The living silence of the universe rushed into the gap between them. So different from the sucking, deafening blackness of the void. He let the energy caress him, craning his head back to view the worlds nestled in Yggdrasil's branches. They hung there, suspended in the vastness of everything, completely unaware of the great tree holding them up. All that was and would be coursed through the World Tree, the knowledge shimmering along its length. Somewhere within the matchless recess of Yggdrasil lay its heart, the realm of the Norns, daughters of the tree.
They did this. The thought was natural, the blame ready at hand. He ignored the quiet voice that argued that what the Norns had done was not the same enslavement he had wielded. His choices had always been his own—though often he hadn't been given more than one.
"What right have you to treat all of existence as your own personal drama?" he asked.
"You are bold to ask me such things. Few would dare." The blackness running up her arms writhed beneath the skin. She flicked her gaze out over the silent pulse of the universe. "Tell me, Silvertongue, may the king execute a murderer?"
"Yes," Loki answered promptly, wondering where this question had come from.
Skuld gave him a sly look that promised she knew his thoughts were racing ahead, trying to find out her paths before she arrived. The look also promised that he wouldn't succeed. "What of the common man. Might he catch a murderer and set up a gibbet in his courtyard and thus bring the matter to an end."
"Of course not." Loki frowned. He wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
Large, dark eyes turned on him. "And why is that?"
Loki felt himself falling back into his recitation stance from school, arms behind his back, legs apart, head up, shoulders back. "It is not for the common man to administer justice or decide who is to live or die outside the realm of defense and battle. It is for the king to weigh the life of a subject and find whether it ought to be forfeit. Only he holds this authority." His voice grew less steady the more he recited. "As king, it is his duty, his right."
Skuld inclined her head. "So." They were no longer talking of kings and commoners.
Loki looked out over Yggdrasil's branches and the lives hanging from them above infinite space. This was the Norn's domain. Daughters of the Tree, they had every right.
He saw the truth of it. He didn't like it.
A/N: Thank goodness for Tony and his ability to help me succinctly and clearly get across the visual I was striving for (I wish my artistic talents were better than they are—because Skuld is pretty cool in my head). Whelp…She is finally revealed. Leave it to Loki to have attracted the personal attention of one of the fates. Twenty-six chapters in and we finally, finally start to understand why the creature we met in the first chapter could do all that she could do. The full picture as to the why will have to wait.
Next Week: Skuld did say he had a penchant for self destructive choices…
Silver Frost: Really? Wow! That's really cool that you're able to still jump back into this even as your interests wander farther afield (I too have been known to dive deep into new fandoms). High praise indeed!
RedHood001: Poor Book has over a thousand years of things that Loki could spring on him, boy should get used to being surprised 😉. And yes, Smaug reference! Because whatever other (multitudinous) flaws those movies had, Smaug was a thing of beauty.