The blow to his chest sends the Doctor off-balance, and he stumbles back into the path of the field, unable to pull himself forwards. He braces himself, scrunching his eyes tightly shut as he stiffens in anticipation of the searing pain… Which seems to come only from his feet. What?
"Agh!" he cries out, and he stares down as his shoes burn up around his feet, leaving him only in mismatched socks, and he stares at Svensson, who has the gall to smile at him. He's laughing. "Those were new shoes! You could have killed me!"
"Don't be ridiculous," he says softly. "You're not human, Doctor Smith: the field isn't programmed to hurt you. Look again at the people on the pediment… None of them were human. They had to keep themselves safe from their human enemies." The Doctor looks between the pediment and the computer console, and he grins.
"Oh, that's brilliant," he says, and he runs around the back of the pediment, holding up his screwdriver and activating the mechanism that lets the stone part ways to let someone examine the inside. "The shoes burned because they were new."
"Too human," Svensson agrees. "I imagine the shield tests energy or lingering DNA on objects, so that projectiles or the like couldn't permeate its protections. I use my Isaz all the time, with my true capabilities, and I imagine you've worn that suit a lot – the new shoes, however—"
"And your tie-pin, which you only wear on special occasions?"
"Burned up," Svensson says, nodding his head as he bends down on the ground, picking up the burned-up piece of his tablet and dropping it into his pocket. This man, the Doctor thinks, threw him into a searing energy field on nothing but a hunch – and yet despite himself, the Doctor finds himself respecting the man.
"Why did it burn you? I could tell you weren't human—"
"I must have confused the system," Svensson admits, shrugging his shoulders as he steps around the field, looking (from a distance) over the Doctor's shoulders as he reaches into the recesses of the pediment, examining the system within and looking for an off-switch. As he looks at the foreign text, he feels the TARDIS translate it before his eyes, and he frowns as he scans over the system notes. "It was attempting to burn away human elements, but almost as soon as it touched me, it slowed down. Mine is hardly an ordinary case."
"A-ha!" the Doctor proclaims, and he presses his sonic screwdriver against a specific panel. With a soft click, the energy field disappears, and he climbs out of the pediment's back, grinning. "There!"
"Excellent," Svensson proclaims, clapping his hands together, but his hands are soon crushed between his chest and the Doctor's as the Doctor pulls him into a crushing hug. Svensson seems confused and stiff, initially, but then he relaxes, wrapping his arms around the Doctor's shoulders and hugging him back. His soft chuckle is warm against the Doctor's ear, and the Doctor smiles as he pulls away.
"You could have killed me," he repeats, looking into Svensson's eyes for any sign of regret: there is none. There is merely a quiet amusement.
"I shouldn't do that. You're my new friend," Svensson says softly, and he smiles. The smile is warm, and it seems natural on his face, but the Doctor cannot help but get the impression that that smile, that exact smile, has been painted on cave walls and wrought out in statues. There's an ancientness about it, an age that shouldn't be bound up in a person on Earth. "Let me make a deal with you."
"A deal?" the Doctor asks, arching his eyebrows. Svensson's tone is flirtatious, but the Doctor pretends not to notice, instead letting the other man lean slightly on his shoulder, keeping close even though the hug is over. "What?"
"We'll go upstairs, and I'll provide a rather fabulous distraction. In the chaos, you can slip away, lest you be interrogated by SHIELD, or SWORD, or any of the other ridiculously named organisations in the vicinity." Make a deal with the Devil, says a voice in the back of his head, the same naughty voice that belongs to a man he both no longer is, and always will be.
"And in return?" the Doctor asks.
"You'll join me for a drink this evening," Svensson offers, warmly. "We might discuss our family histories, as I previously mentioned?" The Doctor chuckles, and then he slowly shakes his head.
"I'm sorry, Loki. I've got to get going – places to be." Something changes in Svensson's eyes: the Doctor had expected anger, but instead, he sees a distant sadness, a melancholy. Loneliness, the Doctor thinks – what an emotion. Not one he's a fan of himself.
"Then consider the deal off the table," Svensson says, in a diplomatic tone, with a polite bow of his head. "The distraction shall be naught but my gift to you." He takes his hand from the Doctor's shoulder, and begins to lead the way toward the lift. As they move, the Doctor looks down at his socked feet, his hands in his pocket, and he examines Svensson, looking over him.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asks, and Svensson smiles a private smile, looking down at his own feet.
"I was many people, once upon a time. Now…" Svensson seems to search the air in front of him for an answer, and when none reveal themselves, he lightly shrugs his shoulders. "I am nobody. I am anonymous."
"Anonymous? Your face is plastered on a hundred magazines out there," the Doctor points out. "How anonymous is that?"
"This isn't my face," is all Svensson will say, and he steps into the elevator, gesturing for the Doctor to join him. They endure the ride to the top of the building in silence, and the Doctor wonders if Svensson will make good on his promise.
✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯
Nick Fury has given the room the "all-clear", declaring it is once again safe to enjoy the party. The energy source, Thor had heard Steven Rogers murmuring to Natasha, has been neutralized, but they have yet to retrieve Loki from downstairs – Loki and the stranger. When the double doors burst open, Thor immediately gets to his feet, grateful to see Loki safe and well… But that is not what he sees.
Loki staggers as he enters the ballroom, his hair mussed and falling out of his bun, strands of it hanging down around his pale face. His eyes are red, his cheeks tear-stained, and there's an unhealthy, green tinge to his skin; his hands are shaking visibly, and around the room, party-goers stand shocked and staring, their eyes all on Loki, and not a single person steps forward to help him.
His eyes are defocused, Thor sees, and although he glances around the room, Thor doubts he sees anything at all. His shaky legs buckle, and Loki's left leg gives way: Thor pushes past a few women in richly-gauzed dresses, men in ill-fitted suits, and he catches the younger man by the shoulder as he falls like a dead weight to the side.
Scooping Loki up before he hits the floor is a matter of ease, and Thor is careful about supporting his head against his shoulder as he takes him into an anteroom, where a few excess chairs and tables are stacked up against the wall. He lowers Loki onto the ground, flat on his back, and presses his fingers against Loki's throat. His pulse seems a little weak, Thor unbuttons the top button of his shirt, loosening the younger man's tie and setting it aside.
"Close the door," Thor orders cleanly as Tony and Steven come into the room, and he sees Steven push the door closed with a click. Loki is stirring, and Thor puts his hand on his forehead, testing his temperature, but he feels neither especially cold, nor especially hot. "Loki. How do you feel?"
"You took my tie off," Loki says blearily, one of his hands going limply to his neck, his fingers brushing over the hollow at his collarbone. Thor glances to the side as Tony comes over, carefully crouching down next to Thor where he knees, and Loki's pupils slowly stop their erratic movements, his lips parting slightly. He looks past Thor and Tony, his gaze coming in to focus on the figure of Steven against the wall: his arms are crossed over his chest. Thor knows the man is gentle at heart, but the whole situation of the day has undoubtedly left him in a sour mood.
"What happened?" Steven asks, his tone dark. Thor focuses on Loki, offering his arm and letting Loki carefully pull himself into a sitting position. Loki sits with his knees up, his elbows rested on them and his head tipped forwards. "The call cut out."
"I attempted to run a scan, and the energy field took out the other half of the tablet. Lost my signal, I'm afraid. The man with me, Smith, he managed to turn it off. The pediment is part of an ancient security system, and prevents humans from coming within its bounds, and—" Loki's hand goes to his mouth, and the green tinge returns to his features: Thor furrows his brow. The younger man looks sick as a bilgesnipe, his head lolling a little on his shoulders, and when he gags, he brings the back of his hand close to his mouth. "Fury's two soldiers—"
"Didn't sink in right away, huh?" Steven asks, and Thor glances between him and Loki on the ground, trying to make sense of what precisely is going on. He had noticed Tony and Steven were away from the rest of them, locked away in a room with Nick Fury and Abigail Brand, but two soldiers…? "You never see somebody die before?" Die?
"I was a child of the country," Loki says, gritting his teeth, and he gags again. "I was hunting before I could read."
"Late reader, huh?" Tony asks, and Loki lets out a weak laugh. He gags again, but then swallows hard. "We need to get you a bowl?"
"I'm rather hoping it will pass," Loki says, so stoic, and Thor thinks of the other Loki – his brother, now lost. As a child, he cried copiously over dead things, whether they were flowers or horses or figures in myth, but he hardened as they grew older. Loki was comfortable and confident on the battlefield, easily felling warrior after warrior without the barest hint of regret. Thor feels the pang of grief inside him, distant and yet striking a cold note within his chest. "You should— The man, Smith. Where is he?"
"He must have taken a different way out," Tony says, shaking his head. "Fury or Brand'll have sent men after him, don't worry about it. And the soldiers, Derrick and Hansen… They knew what they signed up for. There's risk involved, and they knew that." This time, Steven Rogers moves quickly, and when Loki's stoicism finally gives way, he vomits into a mop bucket from the corner of the room, a wet spatter sounding as it hits the little water left in the bottom.
Steven reaches out, his hand touching to Loki's shoulder, and Thor finds himself somewhat surprised – Steven has never professed any especial like for Loki, not appreciating his acerbic sense of humour, nor the playful arrogance he will engage in with Tony, but it seems that seeing Loki like this, vulnerable, he has changed his mind a little.
"I have to go liaison with Fury and Brand. Get it all out, Svensson. You'll feel better. It gets easier."
"For soldiers, perhaps," Loki mumbles, his voice echoing slightly in the chamber of the bucket, and Thor sees the comment hits the captain hard. Steven pauses a second, his lips parting, but he does not argue: his eyes merely become a little sadder, and he gives a single nod of his head before he leaves the room. "Have they told you, Thor? What happened?"
"No," Thor says quietly. "But you need not relate the tale for my sake, Son of Sven." Loki's hand touches Thor's own, his thin, clever fingers clutching at Thor's broad ones. Loki's hands look delicate from a distance, but they are scarred and dappled with past cuts and grazes; a patch of his hand and two of his fingers lack hair entirely as a result of the way they've been burned in some accident of engineering or other.
"They lacked even time to scream, to be aware of their fate," Loki says, urgently. His eyes are wide, the light filtering into their sea-green depths, and he seems like he may crumble into pieces at any moment. "One moment, they were alive: the next, they were dust. And it was— it was my fault. I ought have put down the tablet, raised my arms—"
"No, Loki," Tony breaks in, shaking his head. "Look, they stepped right into the field of that energy field, and you told them not to. They were pointing guns at you as you tried to fix a problem: I wouldn't have been very co-operative either. It wasn't your fault." Loki is staring into the distance, now, and Thor looks to Tony. Tony's mouth is twisted in a messy line, his expression betraying a sense of sadness, of grief… And perhaps of shared feeling.
"I will retrieve for you some water, Loki," Thor says quietly, and he pats Tony on the shoulder as he stands to leave the room.
✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯
As Loki steps into his apartment that evening, he smiles to himself, reaching up and feeling the softness of his own lips beneath the leather of his gloves, feeling the ghost of electric sensation there. He is pleased, of course, that his gambit in adopting a fainting spell and feigning some ridiculous guilt for the idiot soldiers had been believed.
The taste of bile had lingered in his mouth for longer than was fair, and he had been grateful for the water Thor had brought to him; he was less grateful for the ensuing interrogation from members of both the SWORD and SHIELD teams, but he had been glad for the walk home in the pleasant cool of the New York night.
"Want a ride?" Stark had asked him, holding up the keys to some fast-paced automobile, and Loki had smiled at him, softly, delicately. He was playing a young man beset by death, after all, and upset at the thought of his own mortality! He could not possibly betray too much apparent strength.
"No," Loki had murmured, proffering his arm for the other man to take. "Although I shouldn't decline an escort."
Removing his coat and scarf, he hangs them each upon the neat hooks beside his door, then slides off his shoes and puts them upon the shoe rack beside the welcome mat. Midgardians have such specialized furniture, with storage devices designed for all manner of specific fare, and Loki enjoys having everything in its place.
Tony had kissed him on the pavement outside, tangling his hand in Loki's hair and drawing him in close, and Loki had delighted in the power that accompanied leaving the other man, panting and flushed and some blocks away from the nearest taxi rank, upon his doorstep. He still feels the sensation of Tony Stark's beard against his own, still feels the soft vibration of Tony's laugh against his tongue, his groan and grasping hands as Loki had pushed him away.
"I like your flat," says a voice in the darkness of his living room, and Loki looks at the figure of Doctor John Smith, sprawled comfortably upon Loki's favourite armchair. He flicks on the light, and he watches the way Smith's eyes adjust to the sudden light, his pupils constricting as he blinks rapidly. "I actually took you for a minimalist, but this, this is very nice. Edwardian?"
"Georgian," Loki answers mildly, delicately removing his gloves and setting them in one of the compartments of a shelf beside his shoulder. The shelf holds various gloves and accoutrements – pocket squares, hair ribbons, watches. Accessories to his outfits, to be taken up as he leaves the house. "The Edwardian style is perhaps more comfortable, but… Gaudy." Smith smiles. "You said you had places to be."
"I do," Smith says, after a pause, but then he shrugs his shoulders. "But, ah… Well, Time's not really as urgent as it seems like." Loki frowns, tilting his head slightly to the side as he tries to puzzle through that particular statement of nonsense. "That offer of a coffee still open?"
"Of course," Loki replies: with a polite nod of his head, he gestures for Smith to follow him, and this is how he finds himself in his modest kitchen with a hot drink between his cool palms, settled upon the counter on one side of the room with Smith settled beside the sink on the other side.
"Your kitchen's smaller than I expected. Not one for cooking?" Smith asks, and Loki shakes his head. Why is he entertaining this, he wonders? Why is he allowing this strange man into his home, to potter about his private things? And yet Loki finds he minds no more than when Thor or Darcy or Pietro are here: Loki's apartment is his own, to be certain, but he cannot be his true self here, and there are no signs of his secrets here as there might be in his private laboratory.
"When I was younger, there was a distinct fear that I was like to poison anybody in my reach. Cuisine seemed pointless as a hobby if no one would sample my labours." It is strangely refreshing to be around Smith. Perhaps that is why Loki doesn't feel the need to attack him or cast him out of his home: Loki has for so long shared secrets only of his new life, his human life. To speak so candidly on the life which truly bore him feels distinctly liberating. Smith takes a slow sip of his coffee, looking Loki in the eyes.
"Would you have? Poisoned people?" Loki considers the question. Certainly, later in life, he had cultivated an extensive knowledge of poisons, interested at their interaction, at those which could envenom a blade and others that worked best in wines or ports, at those which came as fine powders and others in the form of thick liquid, almost like syrup, or half-congealed blood. But as a child? Young, and interested in the servants as they cooked? Accused of poisoning merely because of his penchant for the wonder of seiðr?
"No, I don't think so. But one can never be sure of these things," Loki says softly. He breathes in the scent of his coffee, rich and robust, settling deep within his lungs and seeming to warm him from the inside out. Asgardian might have wondrous technologies, but coffee? It is an elixir the likes of which he had never tasted at home, so bitter and so subtle in its varying tastes! "Why are you here?"
"Thought it might be nice to have a chat," Smith says lightly. "You know, about the weather, current events, latest episode of Emmerdale… Stuff like that."
"What is your name?" Loki asks, cupping his mug comfortably between his hands and feeling its smoothness beneath his rough, well-worked palms. "Your true name, I mean: you cannot possibly expect me to believe your name is John Smith." Smith laughs, shaking his head.
"No, no, that's not it at all. It's the Doctor, actually. Just the Doctor." He says it casually, as if it means nothing at all for him to offer such a name, so easily, so simply! And yet Loki feels his mouth run abruptly dry, feels the blood pound between his ears, and oh! Oh!
"The Doctor?" Loki repeats. For a moment, it is like the whole of the universe fades entirely away, and he is sat not on his kitchen counter, but in the vacuum of silent space, staring and yet unseeing; he hears the shatter of his mug upon the ground distantly, as if the sound itself is but a ghost.
✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯
Loki is barely a few centuries old, standing with his soles bare in the dust of a far-distant planet, staring up at a huge statue of a man bent half at the waist, smiling paternally down from his pedestal. A bowl of sweet incense burns before his feet, and the scent is cloying and sweet, like gelatine: something is proffered in his left hand, a package or a packet open.
"Loki," his mother says, and he turns his head toward her. Princelings do not tarry, he supposes she might say, were he Thor, but instead she offers him a small smile and puts out her hand.
"Who is he?"
"A god of this planet. I know him not." And he and his mother walk through the marketplace, searching for the beautiful wools and yarns with which his mother wants to weave.
"Who is he?" Loki asks later on, of a man in deep blue robes, dyed with the rare flowers that only grow upon the river's embankment when the moon is at its height. This man is a priest, and Loki knows him by the curls upon his head, and the paternity of his smile.
"The Doctor," the priest had said, and had told him nothing more.
Loki finishes his story with a flourish of seiðr that dances on the air like glittering sand caught in a storm, and he smiles, offering a polite bow at the thunderous applause he receives from the others in the encampment. It is the first time he has dared to display his magic so openly, so far from the protections of Asgard: here he is, isolated and anonymous, a hundred stars away from his homeland, and he has never felt so gloriously free. His five hundredth birthday has been his best yet.
"That was beautiful," says an elderly woman, a sage with hair of deepest, shining silver. "I have a tale to tell myself, traveller, but I fear I cannot paint such wonders as you."
"You shall paint them with your voice alone, dear lady," Loki says, bowing his head before her, offering her the respect she is owed as the elder of the group, and he sees her wide smile.
"Very well," she says, and she slowly pulls herself to stand, her shawl settled loosely around her shoulder as she addresses the group. Loki settles himself cross-legged on the ground, and a young man pats his shoulder encouragingly, offering more silent thanks for his story. The camp is on the curve of a river, and is sweetly cool with the passing water that drifts by in silver streams: Loki watches her, the elder woman, with care and focus. "My name is Peladi, and when I was but a newly-wed, expecting my firstborn, the rains came to the Equis Plains. But these were not the rains we expected and welcomed each summer's end, no: these rains pounded and pounded upon the dusty ground, until the sand became slurry under our feet, and we couldn't lay down to sleep because our bedrolls were washed away."
Loki shifts in his seat, bringing his knees up before him and leaning his elbows on them, watching Peladi speak. Her old eyes are alight with energy, her wizened lips quirked into a smile even as she speaks of a tragedy in her life time.
"We saw lights in the sky – a disc of sorts. And then came a man in clothes of technicolour, and he carried above him a device made of panels in all the colours of the rainbow, and like a boat in reverse, it protected him from the rain as it fell. He was up to his knees in the filthy water, and he said, "I say! We should see about this! How are you, madam?" And I said, well, my husband and wives are readying for us to leave – we cannot stay here on the plains.
"But you're pregnant," he said to me. "Are you fit for travel?"
"I must, sir," I said. He said he would see what he could do, and turned away from me, but before he went, I asked him his name. And he said he couldn't tell me that, but he would give me something to call him: the Doctor."
Loki's heart skips a beat. The words ring in his ears, that mystery from his childhood, the distant god: the Doctor.
"And I saw him! He went up to that disc in the sky by a ladder, and he spoke to those within – it wasn't merely an apparition, a ghost, but a sort of sky-ship, and within were hundreds of people. The bow of their ship had interacted with our clouds in some way, stopping the rains from stopping as they ought, and they came down to help us rebuild what had been washed away. Oh, these men from the skies… You ought have known them, seen them!" Loki remains silent, knowing himself to be the only alien upon this world, but Peladi is beaming as she pulls her shawls more tightly around herself, looking dreamily into the ether. "They had hair on every inch of their bodies, long and trailing, and they spoke low and huskily with voices like distant waves."
"And the Doctor?" Loki asks. "What of him?" Peladi looks down at him, and her eyes are so brightly yellow, amber in the dying light of the evening.
"I saw him once more, roaming in the city at Porth's Point some months later, after my babe had been born. I saw his hair shine in the light, and the panels upon his strange device: I ran, calling his name, but he heard me not… He was lost to me." Loki nods his head, slowly, and files this story away. "But the people! Oh, these men, like desert wolves…"
In the vacuum of space, there is no sound, no air, and no gravity.
Loki creates his own.
He walks in space as if he is walking on a flat expanse of land, thinking his loneliest thoughts and smiling vaguely to himself. He enjoys these journeys from one planet to the next – for the majority of his journey, he will transform himself sometime, use his seiðr to speed himself the huge distances, but for some minority, he will enjoy the mundanity of the walk on a fathomless expanse.
The impossibility of it, the normality of it, delights him to his chaotic core.
The universe is a wide place, and it isn't until he is eight or nine centuries long that he happens to pass a ship as he walks. The ship must find his lifesigns, for they come very close to him, even tractor him aboard (the impertinence!), and he stands in their vacuum lock, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyebrows raised.
"My name is Jenny," she says. She's a blonde girl, petite and wide-eyed, with muscle heavy on her form. Loki looks at her, his head tilted to the side. "You were… You were walking. Out there, in space."
"And you interrupted me," Loki says, his tone deliberate.
"Oh," she says. "That was rude, wasn't it?"
"Mmm," Loki agrees, with a slow inclination of his head. "Although I might forgive your curiosity."
"I'll let you go, sorry—" she seems to hesitate, and then she says, "But before you go… Look, I'm looking for my father." Loki looks down at her, his lips pressed together: despite himself, he thinks of the foal Sleipnir, borne of Loki by the stallion Svaðilfari. Never could he nurse that cursed child, nor even hold him to his breast – Odin took the foal from him, and he lives alongside the mares of the palace stables, where Loki is no longer permitted to tread. The wound is still barely healed, months-old and aching as he walks – and perhaps that is why he walks farther than he really needs to.
"Who is your father? If I know him, I shall tell you what I know."
"His name is— Look, this sounds stupid, but his name is the Doctor." Loki feels the blood drain from his face, and he stares her in the face, this girl.
"Your father?" he repeats, and he clenches his hands together. Joy bursts across her cheeks, her bright smile, her eyes – so full of light – and he shakes his head slightly, spreading out his hands. "I— I know him not, child, I am sorry. But I will tell you what little I do know. Let me give you co-ordinates, and you will share with me what you know of him."
Jenny smiles, her teeth white and shining. "Alright," she says, putting out her hand to shake. "It's a deal."
✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯
Loki stares down at his coffee cup, shattered on the ground. His mouth is still dry, his blood still pounding, his head slightly light, and he looks slowly to the Doctor's face. The Doctor has the smile of a man who has long-since pretended not to care for his fame, and has long-since failed.
"Have you heard of me?" the Doctor asks, showing his white smile: yes, Loki sees the teeth of young Jenny in this man, sees her vibrance, her beauty… Time Lord. But Loki will not smile as the Doctor does, will not show amusement, or charm – the Doctor had been an absent thought for him, a research project, a distraction. The idea of meeting him,
"The Time Lord with his blue box. Yes, I have heard of you – bits and pieces of you, here and there. I've heard six tales of your mercy, your heart," Loki says quietly. The Doctor's eyes eyebrows raise slightly, and his smile fades a little – he leans back, tilting his chin up a little and displaying apparent uncertainty.
"All on Earth?" he tries to say it casually, but it sends ideas reeling in Loki's head – the idea that he might have searched and searched, read and read, for any scant mention of this man and that he should have been on Midgard all this time…
"On Earth?" Loki repeats, and he stares at the other man, trying to take this in. He had been so frustrated, finding so little of the Doctor after he had parted ways with his daughter, but this… Curious. Curious. "No," he admits. "Elsewhere… Here and there. You control time, do you not? I control something better."
"Oh?" the Doctor says, and he takes a sip from his drink, seeming amused. He thinks of Loki as a child before him, perhaps: he forgets he may not be the most powerful man in the room. A dangerous thing to forget, that, but Loki was guilty of much the same sin when he was a younger man. "And what's that?"
"The beating heart of every man I meet," Loki whispers. The Doctor's lips part. Loki laughs, pushing seiðr into the air, and he reconstitutes the coffee and the broken mug together, drawing them back up between his palms. The coffee is not drinkable now, of course, marred as it shall be with the dust upon the floor, so he pulls himself down from the counter and pours the coffee away. "Magic, as I'd call it. I imagine you'd call it something else."
"Magic doesn't exist," the Doctor says, tutting his tongue. "It's… It's just a different sort of science."
"If you like," Loki says mildly. "But I don't know many men who can make science, as I can, with their bare hands." The Doctor has nothing to say to that, and merely creates a rather adorable furrow between his dark brows, tapping his long fingers against the mug. The mug declares itself the property of THE OFFICE BITCH – a gift from Darcy that Christmas past. The Doctor seems not to notice. "And what of gods?"
"I don't believe in gods," the Doctor says, and Loki wonders what it must feel like, to be a god yourself, and believe not in your own power. Loki himself is worshiped on at least twenty planets, that he knows of, and he should never dismiss the power this gives him – ephemeral, the power may be, but nonetheless, it spurs him on. "Loki Svensson… What's your real name?"
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," Loki says, and the Doctor lets out a short laugh.
"I can feel your… Impact," the Doctor says, waving his right hand in the air and wiggling his fingers as he does so. "On the timelines, I mean. How old are you?"
"Closer to three millennia than two," Loki says, slowly. "But I fear, as old as I am, I lose track of the years as they pass." Two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four: Loki knows precisely how old he is, and tracks his age as he might anything else. To know one's exact age is considered rather precocious upon Asgard, and he is so used to denying knowledge of it that he doesn't realize how silly, how unnecessary the lie is until it has already fled his lips. "And yourself? I see the age in your eyes, like the light of a distant star."
"Nine hundred and four," the Doctor answers. Nine hundred! So young! And yet… But Loki was walking the stars long before this man could have been born. How— Ah. The time travel. How silly of him to forget so vital a thought. "You travel in space?" the Doctor asks as Loki finally rinses out his mug, and Loki chuckles quietly, wryly. The Doctor seems confused, and Loki sighs.
"Not anymore. I cannot risk leaving this planet… I'd be noticed."
"What if you came with me?" Loki pauses, staring into his sink. He gives the Doctor a sideways glance. He seems entirely serious, doing his best to be casual about the offer, but it settles in Loki's chest with the immensity of a new star, hot and heavy.
"You don't know who I am," Loki says. Oh, but why should it matter? Shouldn't he grasp at this opportunity while he can, to travel with a legend?
"Who are you?" Loki opens his mouth. He feels his own hesitation, curses himself for it, and wishes times were simpler, wishes that he was centuries younger, wishes that he still had his wife upon his arm and his children at his side, wishes the wishes he has long-since wished to exhaustion.
"Guess," he says. And oh, how the Doctor smiles – oh, how he smiles.
"Seems unfair to make me guess," he says, idly. "Unless I've got multiple tries, I mean… Why don't you come with me?"
"Just until you guess?"
"Just until I guess," the Doctor confirms, and he puts out his hand to shake. Loki thinks of the Doctor's daughter, all those centuries ago, and he grasps the Doctor's hand, shakes it.
"Deal," he says, and this is the moment – he pinpoints it centuries later, when he lies alone in a jail cell and stares at himself in opaque glass – where he is irrevocably, irreversibly, tied to the Doctor and thus, to the fates, forevermore.