Loki retreated to his room, finally managing to shake Thor. He needed to think. First Skuld and now Thor—of all people—had sent him reeling. Skuld's true intent still lay beyond him. The Norn had refused to answer when he called and she had not appeared to him since her ominous warning that he would regret tormenting Barton.
And Thor, Thor was, well, Thor. Persistent to the last.
He sank down into the corner, knees pressed against his chest and fingers braced against his temples. It was himself he no longer knew. Where was his rage? Where the disdain for Thor's overtures of help? Where the desire to make Thor suffer?
Ever since his fall from Bifrost—his leap—he had stoked an ever smoldering fire of hatred for Odin and his lies, for Thor and his dismissive arrogant ways, for those closest to him who had done nothing but betray him.
"Why are you so desperate that I hate you?"
The words had wedged themselves deep within his psyche. He didn't want to be hated; he wanted to be feared, to be admired, respected, noticed. To not be alone.
But didn't he deserve that?
Skuld had confirmed what he already knew, that he would be destroyer of worlds—of everything. That was the role that best suited him. He'd tried to embrace it. If New York was any indication he'd been doing rather well.
He leaned his head against the wall, eyes closed. It had been so much easier to focus on all the betrayals—Odin, the Warrior's Three, Thor, even Frigga with her lies that he was her son—and to ignore Thor's pleading to come home—it wasn't his home—to pretend not to hear the sincerity in his voice. When he remembered being flung into the abyss, the part of him that longed to return to the only family he had ever known would deaden and grow silent.
"But he didn't throw you to the void."
Loki cracked an eye to see Skuld. The Norn perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, as if unaccustomed to such a simple, everyday action. He leaned forward, draping one arm over his knees. "No, he did not."
She waited for him to continue.
"I," he swallowed, "let myself fall. I don't know if I meant it as an end…" he trailed off and looked to the Norn for confirmation.
Skuld pressed her long, skeletal fingers together. "I think that you did not care overly much if you survived—but that is not the same as wishing to die." She stood, leaving the covers completely un-rumpled. "Do you remember his face?"
How could he have forgotten such a thing? He'd seen Thor wearing a thousand different emotions over the centuries and could read even the subtlest of them. He'd never seen such raw anguish before—hadn't thought Thor capable of it.
A snarl of the old disdain coiled up his spine. And yet Thor hadn't understood, none of them had, what he'd been trying to do. For them, for all of Asgard. It was no lie that he'd lured Laufey and the Frost Giants to Asgard for Odin, for Frigga, for all of them—and maybe for himself. He'd found a way to end the war Thor had started, to extinguish the threat Odin had been too weak to deal with. He'd done it and they'd reacted in horror. He'd been so sure at the time—so certain of his cause…and yet with what Thor had learned from Merat...perhaps. He wrenched his thoughts away from what that might mean.
"How else should they have responded to such reckless, bloody deeds?"
Loki tensed as the Norn followed the course of his thoughts. Glaring up at the creature, he felt venom filling his words as he spat back, "there was purpose to my actions. For those and all that followed. In that at least the All-Father and I are alike. We have our reasons."
In an instant, Skuld loomed over him, terrible and ancient in her fury. "Do not speak to me of reasons!" Like a dark, cresting wave she swelled above Loki. "As if you could argue away the errors of your actions, the offspring of your flawed soul. Reasons! Your excuses fly in the face of the greater Reason woven into the roots of the cosmos. That knowledge sits within your marrow Laufeyson—and you knew that what you planned to do was vicious and wicked." She cupped his face and softened. "No matter the depth of the pain that caused it. You knew."
Somehow there was warmth in those deep, uncanny eyes as she regarded him. "You have a great capacity for rage—what good has it brought you? Above New York? At the end of a broken Bifrost? You always chided Thor for his outbursts. You would do well to heed your own advice, Trickster."
The slurry of anger and fear drained away as Loki let his head drop between his shoulders. His words were quiet, ladened with sudden exhaustion. "What do you want with me, Skuld Skrivner."
Her eyes widened in what might have been amusement. "Your answer will come, but you are not yet ready for it." The ink beneath her skin writhed as runes ghosted across her shoulders and down her arms to vanish in the blackness of her hands. She regarded the letters for a moment before swiveling her head back to Loki. "You are not yet who you need to be."
"Who you want me to be." Some fight came back into his voice as accusation laced his tone.
"Who you are capable of being," she said in a tone perhaps meant to be gentle.
Flashes of New York burning and the Bifrost roaring with power flared brightly within his mind. "I do not know this person you imagine. He doesn't exist."
"Doesn't he?" She drew a nail along her arm, until black blood welled up. She flicked the droplets into the air scattering them into a thousand tiny runes that pulsed and changed, first one sign then another. Under the manipulation of the Norn's long fingers the symbols swarmed together into a distinct form. What was clearly a young boy, slight of build with an inquisitive tilt to his head emerged from the cloud of letters. As Loki peered closer he could catch the flash of some of the words that created the image: brother, son, Asgardian, magic, books, curious, laughter, prince, lonely, different, mischief. The free floating runes swirled together into a second form—a gangly foal with eight-legs.
Loki couldn't help but roll his eyes as the word "mother" appeared in the boy's runes.
The inky figures darted about one another, gamboling and playing. As the horse reared up to drape its front hooves over the boy's shoulders, the two images flowed together and then apart into two new forms. No longer a boy, Loki could see his simulacrum was older and filled with even more words, as was the broader teen beside him. If the hammer gripped in the second figure's hand hadn't given it away the words that swirled within would have: Thunderer, crown-prince, warrior, loyal, arrogant, fighter, friend, brother.
The Thor and Loki of Skuld's conjuring whirled around one another in harmony, fighting against some unseen foe. Magic and agility working in tandem with strength and bravery. The foes vanquished, Loki could see the brothers throwing back their heads and laughing, draping their arms about one another's shoulders and sauntering off into a mist of ink.
More and more images whirled before Loki: knife practice with Frigga, fighting alongside the Warriors Three, pouring over books in the library, fighting against Sif, fighting beside Sif, being chastised for some prank, rescuing Thor from yet another disaster, being rescued by Thor, being dragged into a dancing ring by Freya, standing through matters of state with Odin. Thor, Thor, and Thor again.
As the word-Loki aged and grew, new words began to appear that hadn't been a part of him before. New words that often overwrote or crowded out those that had been at his core before. Words like trickster, jealous, sorcerer, vain, darkness, scholar, cynic, loathing, silver-tongue, inadequate, freak. Betrayed. Betrayer.
"Where is it?" he asked evenly, eyes still boring into the mass of words.
Skuld merely folded her head to the side and blinked—too slowly.
He snapped his gaze up to hers. "The word that best describes me."
"Ah." She flicked her hands and the image sprouted curving horns and a billowing cape, a dark, sooty red seeping into the lettering. New words bled in with the red: murderer, destroyer, madness, adopted, failure, false-son, Jotun, malice, void. Horrible labels, but not the one he knew he deserved. "You will not find it—the word you seek."
The word may not have been there, but that is certainly what everything added up to. What a perfect candidate for Ragnarok he was—a vindictive creature of malice and darkness. Impulsively he reached out with tendrils of snapping magic, pulling the word-figure into his hand. With an angry flick of his fingers he smudged the inky runes and with short sharp strokes wrote a new word into the mass.
"Is this what you want?" He shoved the figure back in the Norn's face, the word "monster" emblazoned across it in runes tinged a sickly green.
"Is that who you choose to be?"
"How can you speak of choice!" Loki was on his feet, yelling now. "You are Fate itself, the will of Ygdrassil incarnate. All of existence bows to your whims." A sick smile cracked across his features, "Freedom is a lie."
"Yes," the Norn replied simply. "And no."
"Riddles."
Long fingers knit together. "Matters beyond your ken. Do you think that a creature of the tree and time could understand that they are both fated and free? Such a truth is beyond the comprehension of even one such as you." She ran her hand across the simulacrum and the green-tinged runes vanished as Loki watched his horns and cape recede. "Fated you may be, but your choices are your own." Another swirling creature of runes appeared before his double and the words for magic, voice, and strength were torn from it and new runes appeared: mortal.
It was then that a smaller form joined his, slipping its small hand into Loki's much larger one. At the other figure's touch the red tinging his image began to fade beneath new runes, and old ones long buried began to grow stronger and more prominent. Thor reappeared and placed his hand on Loki's shoulder. At his touch other words began to worm their way to the surface and one long strangled and hidden showed itself again: brother.
The Norn studied the image, seeing things that Loki could not. "No, not yet who you need to be. But soon. Perhaps." Skuld stopped, as if listening. Her features twisted into a sorrowful mask. "I am sorry, little trickster, but it is time. You must reap what you have sown." The Norn raised her arms and vanished in a swirl of inky runes. Behind her, concealed by the Norn's much taller frame, Book stood in the doorway, the light of the hall flooding over his head and shoulders.
"Tell me it's not true." Book stood terrifyingly still, calm slipping through his grip even as he desperately tried to latch onto it.
He knew.
Lie! Denial welled up within him, some explanation that would tear the betrayal from Book's eyes. You freeze now, Liesmith?! he snarled at himself.
"Tell me what Clint showed me wasn't real."
Bitterness bowed his head as Clint's words floated back to him—you're not half so dangerous when we know who and what you are. So this was his Hawk's revelation—and his revenge. Now the child knew. It galled him to think he once would have reveled in seeing the raw edges of Book's broken trust. Instead they pricked him like so much splintered of glass.
He shuddered. He'd seen those eyes before—why etched into their glassy surface. They crawled out of his nightmares.
Refusing to look at the boy, Loki stared at the bedpost past his shoulder. A skein of ice wrapped round his heart as he forced the words onto his tongue. There were no lies to be told. "It is real." The truth refused to come with eloquence.
"But all those people." Red crept around Book's shining eyes. "You just…let them die." Loki swallowed, closing his eyes against the words that followed. "They were in my way."
A flush rushed to Book's face. His jaw clenched. "That's it. They were just…in your way?"
"They were ants," he said, trying to regain some of the conviction he'd once felt about that belief. Just insects—who would miss a few thousands when there were so many others. A necessary sacrifice. Lesser beings hardly worthy of notice. Insignificant.
"They were people! Like Coon or Kayden. They had friends, family, lives!" A ragged breath hitched in his lungs. "And what about me? Would you have killed me too?"
He couldn't keep the spasm of emotion from his face. The bitter truth twisted his voice through his teeth. "Yes."
The answer hung in the air between them. Book's jaw muscle's twitched as he blinked desperately against threatening tears. Disbelief and self-loathing sent a shiver through him that formed into a pained gasp pinned between a laugh and a sob, "Then why save me?" Anger flared suddenly as he bared his teeth, shouting, "if we mean so little, why save me?"
Loki rounded on him, "Because you weren't an ant anymore!"
Silence stretched between them as Book stepped back, shaking his head. A gulf of wordless accusations filled the room until Loki felt he could barely breath.
"I think I get it now. What I am to you. Not an ant..." Tears trailed down his cheeks as he fought to keep his voice steady. "Cause you get it now, don't you? The blood you're wading in. And you help the reject, the little castaway that nobody ever wanted, and somehow that bleaches away your sins!"
Loki stepped forward, trying to interject.
"No! That's not how it works. You don't get to balance the scales. Not with me, not ever!" Book backed away, a twisted smile on his face, "you really are the Trickster. I bought every lie, let you make a fool of me. How could you possibly care about anyone?" He shook his head in disgust as he turned and bolted from the room.
The silence rooted Loki to the spot. The emptiness of the void had been nothing like the sudden vacuum pulling at him now. Shadows stretched darkly across the room as the sun sank below the mountain peaks, air purpling into twilight. And still Loki stood, head bowed.
A/N: I know! I'm late. Sorry, work attacked and I was really struggling to get this chapter to come together in the way I wanted it to anyways. I figured you'd rather have it be a touch late than have it on time and not as put together. Even with the extra time I'm still not completely satisfied with this chapter—parts just aren't as polished as I usually prefer.
I have, however, known this confrontation was coming from the moment Book rescued Loki from the gutter. It was always just a question of how exactly it would play out.
But….the truth is finally out. Like I think we all knew it would have to come out eventually. And just to apologize in advance to RandomReader13 (and anyone who worries about Book)…you were right to be nervous about Book. And it's...going to get worse.
Next Week: Book doesn't react well to the truth about Loki, and Skuld's purposes for the boy in Loki's life are not reassuring.