Title: Laughing As I Pray
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to A Villain State of Mind and directly follows Cover Up the Sun.
Negotiations - predictably - go south.
The early evening sky was plunged into an eerie twilight, thick grey clouds crowding the sky and turning the western sky an eerie red. Rain fell, not in a steady downpour but in sharp cold gusts of water carried and flung hard by the scurrying wind. Thunder growled and grumbled overhead, illuminating the scene with flashes of lightning as Thor paced back and forth upon the green, waiting for the mutants to answer his challenge.
They definitely knew he was there - Thor spotted a few humanoid silhouettes or faces poking out of doors and windows, before being hastily shut against the wind and the rain. But it seemed they were too cowardly to come out and face him head on. "Hear me, foul creatures!" he roared, relying on the wind and thunder to carry his words. "I am the son of Odin, Prince of Asgard, master of storms! Yield my traitorous brother back to me, or I will tear these hovels to the ground!"
His challenge echoed between the buildings, and Thor waited for long minutes, his anger and blood rising higher with every moment. Then a door opened, and the wind veered suddenly and sharply towards the south, opening a patch of blue sky overhead.
Thor tensed, hand on Mjolnir, as someone began to approach him through the rain - but a flash of lightning illuminated the shadowy figure, and he snarled, because it was not Loki. The figure was female - tall and athletic, with soft brown skin and a shock of pale hair rising from her head. She was quite a handsome woman, and at any other time Thor would have admired her beauty, the grace of her step, the confident power of her stance. But right now, he was in no mood for appreciation.
He pointed Mjolnir towards her as she approached. "So, the mutants send a champion to face me?" he demanded. "Speak your name, that I might know whom I defeat."
"So one has come from beyond the edges of the earth, calling himself a lord and claiming dominionship over this land and its skies?" the woman called out as she approached. As she came closer he could see that her hair was not only fair, but pure white - as white as her eyes, from which light and power wreathed upwards like smoke. "I don't think so, mister."
She raised her arms, and Thor saw that she was wearing a tight-fighted suit of black and shining armor, attached to which was a cape that trailed behind her as she moved. A sudden powerful gust of wind rose from the earth, lifting the cape to stream behind her, and the wind roared upwards and outwards to tear the clouds asunder. The grass and trees flattened under the sudden assault, and the rain was snatched away. Thor felt his conjured storm break into tatters and be swept away, and the shock momentarily cooled the heat of his temper. He had not known that anyone among the Midgardians had such powers.
"Are you the leader of these mutants?" Thor asked her, as the roar of wind around her died away.
She turned towards him, her expression decidedly unimpressed under those white-wreathed eyes. "You could say that," she said. "Ororo Munroe. Some call me Storm."
It was a fitting title, at least, Thor thought. "Then you are the one to whom I must speak," he said. "Bring forth Loki, that he can answer for his crimes!"
"Look, I don't know who you think you are -" Storm started to say.
Had she not heard his declaration earlier? "I am Thor Odinson," he said, anger beginning to creep back into his voice. "Son of Odin All-Father, King of Asgard, foremost among the Nine Realms!"
"All right." She rolled her eyes. "Let me rephrase that. I don't care who you think you are. This is private property and you're neither invited nor welcome here. Class is in session and you're disturbing the students. You have no business trespassing onto our property and threatening our people."
"Loki is not one of you people," Thor snarled. "He is my brother, and I have a right to him!"
"Loki has lived among us for months and fought beside us in our direst hour," she shot back. "He has proven his loyalty to us beyond the shadow of a doubt. He is one of our people. If you're here to raise a hand against him, you'll have to go through us first! More specifically..." She spread her arms again, and her eyes began to glow with eldritch light as the wind rose to her command again. "Me."
The twilight darkened further as the clouds thickened overhead. Thor reached out to them with his power, and was astonished when they resisted his call. He could not wrest control of the storm back from this strange woman, and that should have been impossible - and yet it was so. With a scowl he began to whip Mjolnir around in a circle, conjuring a wind to answer his will.
She countered his power with her own, bringing winds to match the speed of his winds and keep them veered and corralled away from them. The two of them stood at the center of a swiftly speeding vortex, as the two elemental forces - neither able to escape nor overpower the other, driving each other into increasing frenzy - spun round and round in an endless circle. The force of it threatened to knock Thor off his feet, much as he had done to the Destroyer back in the desert town, but he hung grimly on to his stance.
He called lightning to the head of Mjolnir, and threw a bolt at the weather-witch. Eyes blazing, she caught it in one hand and redirected it, a terrible arc of white and blue haloing her form. Lightning jumped and crackled all around them, leaping from ground and sky and in between, until they stood at the center of a howling hurricane of wind and lightning. Plants groaned and bent before the force of it, and tongues of lightning left scorchmarks on the stones of the wall or in the grassy turf. Hail began to rattle down from the clouds above, caught in the storm of wind and lightning, flinging small missiles of ice at deadly speeds. The hurricane pushed slowly outward as the pressure from inside increased, yet still neither one of them would yield to the other.
Thor gritted his teeth and readied his hammer; unbelievable as it might be, this mortal witch had storm-powers that equalled (or, if he dared to admit it, even surpassed) his own. But she was still only a mortal, and he did not see the power of the warrior in her muscles or stance. She could be felled as any giant could be felled. One blow with Mjolnir...
"Cease."
The word was not loud, but it carried through the roar of the winds like a knife-blade sliding through leather. Storm looked startled, and backed up a few steps; her arms lowered, and the fury of the hurricane began to wane. Thor followed her eyes, already knowing to whom the voice belonged; his heart began to hammer double-time as he recognized the slim dark figure standing at the edge of their melee.
He studied the combatants with a cold and haughty expression, but it was to Storm that he spoke. "I thank you, Ororo, but it is probably better if I take things from here."
"Are you sure?" Storm shot Thor an exceedingly dubious look. "I don't think he's exactly in the mood to talk reasonably."
Loki studied Thor, and one side of his mouth curled up. "When is he ever?" he murmured dryly, and for a moment Loki and Storm shared the exact same expression. It was somewhat unnerving for Thor; he was used to Loki looking at him with contempt, but not at all used to other people agreeing with him. "But I'm afraid to say, he's entirely capable of wrecking a large swath of the countryside around in a temper if he doesn't get what he wants. I'll deal with him."
"If that's what you want," Storm said, ceding the field with some reluctance. "We'll be here if you need us, you know."
"I know," Loki replied.
She let the rest of her windstorm wane to nothing; Thor's winds gusted harder for a moment, finding themselves suddenly without resistance, before he hastily quieted them in turn. Storm turned to go, walking towards the nearest building before she abruptly wheeled around and glared at Thor. "But don't think this makes us weather buddies, or worthy opponents, or any of that shit," she said, jabbing a finger towards him. "I've got my eye on you, Odinson!"
The wind died down, a lull in the heart of the storm as the two brothers regarded each other warily. Loki looked better than Thor had last seen him, Thor had to admit; better than he had when he had stepped out of Yggdrasil's dark paths into the heart of the dark elf siege. Then he had looked gaunt and hallowed, still half-crazed from the Chitauri invasion, with dark circles under his eyes and a dangerous tension running right under his skin, like a lightning bolt about to snap out.
Now he looked much more well-fed, less dangerously gaunt, with finer and better-repaired clothes - Midgardian clothes - and his hair sleek and groomed again, in a smooth tail down his back. His green eyes were calmer, less white showing about the edges, less liable to dart from place to place. The electric tension was still there, though.
Thor had to remind himself once again of the different flows of time in different realms; though it had been but a month for Thor, much more time would have passed for Loki on Earth. It was a disconcerting thought, that his time stream and Loki's could have split so wildly, that much of Loki's life had passed without Thor experiencing the same passage of time himself. It felt like a divergence, like the two of them who had always been in one boat down a river now splitting off into separate currents, drifting away and leaving Thor behind. It felt like a wrench, though Thor could not say exactly why it made him feel that way.
Loki was the one to break the silence between them. "What are you doing here, Thor?" he asked.
"That is the very question I have come to ask you, Loki," Thor replied. "What are you doing in this place, among these people?"
Loki rolled his eyes. "Well, until this untimely little display of your temper, I was teaching my class," he said in an annoyed drawl.
Thor sputtered. "Teaching? You? " It was a ludicrous thought. Loki as a teacher? Loki, who hoarded secrets like a dragon hoarded gold? Loki, who was ever impatient and scornful towards anyone slower of thought than he (which included pretty much everyone in Asgard, let alone Midgard.) Loki, who had led an army against this realm not a year prior, spending his time in teaching the mortals he so despised? "I do not believe it. What would you teach?"
Loki's voice practically dripped with ice. "Cosmology," he said.
All levity dropped away, and Thor's eyes widened in alarm. Loki knew more of the secret paths in and around Asgard than anyone else in that Realm; that was how he had been able to sneak Thor and the Deepness out of the siege, and that was how he had let the Frost Giants in. "You are betraying our secrets to these creatures?" Thor said accusingly.
"What, like the time you told all of Asgard's secrets to that Foster woman of yours?" Loki scoffed.
"That was different!" Thor protested. Jane Foster was a good woman, and wise and learned (for a Midgardian.) She would never turn against Asgard.
"Oh? How?" Loki crossed his arms over his chest. "They live in the same Realms we do; they have the right to know of the universe around them. That's all there is to it."
"That's never all," Thor said, voice low. "Not when it comes to you, Loki. It can never be so simple."
Loki heaved an exasperated breath. "What do you want from me, Thor?" he demanded.
"I want to know what you are doing!"
Loki snarled. "I already told you what I am doing - teaching!"
"No!" Thor shouted. Loki could be sly and slippery, but Thor could outmatch him in stubbornness. "I want to know what you are really doing - whatever secret plot you are hatching!"
"For the last time, I. AM. NOT. DOING. ANYTHING!" Loki shouted, punctuating each word with a sharp jab at Thor's chest. "Apart from breathing, which apparently in itself is an offense to you!"
That hurt, shaking Thor down to the core, and he responded with a savage fury. "How DARE you!" he roared. "I grieved for you - when I thought you were - you have no idea how I felt, no idea at all. I was overjoyed to learn you were alive!"
"Oh, joy, yes, I can see that you are!" Loki snarled, the sarcasm bitter and savage in his mouth. "I can see the joy just steaming off you! As soon as you discover I am alive again, you immediately take it upon yourself to chastise me for my... oh, what was the phrasing... 'imagined slights?' " He grinned maliciously.
"I don't -"
Thor tried to respond, but Loki cut him off with a sharp gesture, the nasty smile sliding slowly off his face. "You didn't question it very hard, did you? You were so glad to see me beg for your forgiveness, so proud of me for sacrificing myself in some suitably heroic stupidity!"
"That's not -" Thor said, but Loki rode right over him, caught up in a whirlwind of his own furious unhappiness.
"Admit it, Thor, you loved me better dead than you ever did alive! How it must infuriate you to see all that good work wasted -"
"I'M NOT ANGRY BECAUSE YOU'RE ALIVE!" Thor roared, finally getting a word in over Loki's bitter rant through sheer volume. "I'm angry because you lied! Because you tricked me, and ran off! I lost everyone, Loki, everyone! And you let me believe that! WHY?"
"I did what I must to protect myself!" Loki took a harsh breath, the muscles in his jaw working as he took a step back, visibly getting hold of himself. "It was the only chance I had to escape and not be pursued! What reason had I to return to Asgard, when all that awaited me was eternity in a cell? You know perfectly well that Odin would never have allowed your pardon to stand -"
"Odin no longer rules in Asgard," Thor interrupted him.
Loki's expression went milk-pale, shock draining all the color out of it. For a moment he was utterly still, all motion and emotion fled inwards. It was a long moment before he managed to stutter out, "What..." He swallowed, and had to work before he could manage to say, "He's dead?"
"No," Thor shook his head. "But he has not woken from the Odinsleep since Mother died. I am Prince-Regent, making decisions in his name, for now."
Loki was silent for several moments, and then he let out a bitter laugh. "So you are king of Asgard, at last," he said, "in all that matters but name. The Bifrost is repaired, else you could not have come here. So I suppose you can visit your little friends and your little girlfriend any time you will, too. Congratulations, Thor," he said with his voice searing with sarcasm, "you officially have it all."
"Not all," Thor said, daring to grasp at this moment of unexpected - not peace, but at least, a strange kind of detante between them. "Not until you come home."
Loki shook his head. "I am home, Thor."
Thor started, looking around him incredulously. The landscape probably did not show itself to its best advantage right now, in the gray storm-twilight and with wind and lightning damage all over the place - but even without that, it was a mere collection of hovels compared to Asgard. Hovels, inhabited by evil beings. How could Loki possibly prefer this to the Golden Realm? "This place? This place is no home!"
"It is a place that has accepted me. Among people who accept me - for who I am." Some of the anger and bitterness seemed to fade out of him, leaving him drained and tired. "All I want is to be left alone. After all you and Asgard have done to me... Why can't you give me this chance?"
The plaintive tone struck a spark of guilt in Thor, which quickly fanned the flames of his outrage. How dare Loki try make Thor feel guilty, after all Loki had done? "Done to you? Do not pretend to be the injured party, Loki!" he growled. "You led an army against Midgard! Give you a chance? I tried to give you chances again and again, and each time you spurned me!" Loki rolled his eyes theatrically, which only spurred Thor's ire further. "And now that I come back, I find you have allied with monsters yet again!"
"Monsters?" Loki looked startled, then offended. He huffed an incredulous laugh. "You mean the mutants? My friends - monsters? Is that what you think, Thor?"
"It is what is said!" Thor retorted angrily. "All in Midgard know the true base nature of these subhuman miscreations -"
"Oh, you're just like the others!" Loki shouted, his temper reasserting itself with blinding speed. "Closed-minded fools. They see greatness and they react with jealousy, hate and fear! The mutants aren't less than human, Thor. They are more! More akin to us than the humans ever were.
"In their powers are sparks of godhood. Through them, the human genome struggles to regain what was lost, to repair what was broken. When all the humans are dead and gone it is the mutants, the children of mankind, who will inherit this world." There was a fanatic light glowing in his eyes now, a wide smile breaking across his face as he turned and reached one hand out towards Thor in invitation. "The mutants are the future, Thor! Midgard's future among the stars, by our sides. Twilight may come for the mortals, but for the mutants, dawn is only just rising!"
Sparks of godhood? Midgard's future in the stars? Thor shook his head, angry and distressed. Did Loki not even realize how divorced from reality he had become, to spout such absurdities? He clutched at Loki's hand on his chest, hoping to draw him back to reason through touch alone. "Loki, you are delusional! Enough of these ravings - come to your senses!" he pleaded.
Shock played across Loki's face for a moment, a brief moment of betrayed woe, quickly swallowed by rage. "Delusional?" he shouted, and shoved Thor fiercely away. Where before he had been struggling to keep a grip on his temper, now he seemed to have lost that grip entirely, struggling for words out of a mouth that would rather spit acid. "DELUSIONAL? You think that what I say is 'ravings' just because your dull wits cannot comprehend it? The very world must be brim-full of madmen to your eyes, Thor!"
Thor gritted his teeth. He should have known, there was no reasoning with Loki; sooner or later, all his attempts to reach him through speech broke down. Where words failed, force must substitute, and at least this was something Thor was not lacking. "If you will not willingly accompany me," he growled, "then I will make you come! By force, if I must!"
Loki glared at him, eyes two cold chips of poisoned ice as he slid back into a combat stance. "I'd just like to see you try," he hissed.
Gripping Mjolnir forward, Thor lunged forward and reached for the lapels of Loki's coat. He was much stronger than Loki, and Loki knew it as well as he; if he could get Loki in his grip, usually he would not even try to resist. But Loki shoved him back again, wrenching himself free of Thor's grasp. A green flicker at the corner of Thor's vision drew his eye to Loki's left hand, held low by his hip; a slim, razor-sharp dagger appeared in that hand, sweeping up to strike low.
At the sight of his brother drawing steel on him, Thor's reflexes kicked in; his hand shot out and grabbed Loki's wrist, squeezing tight enough to force the tendons to yield, opening the fingers and loosening his grip on the weapon. Loki snarled wordlessly and grabbed Thor's arm with his free hand, and for a moment the two of them grappled.
Light flashed off to Thor's side, accompanied by a soft fhwazm sound almost drowned out by the lightning. Before Thor could untangle himself from Loki enough to react, a sudden blast of stinging heat slapped the side of his face. "Leave him alone!" shrieked a new, high-pitched voice.
Thor disengaged from Loki and staggered back a step, brushing at his face and blinking in an attempt to clear his vision. In an instant a small body was in front of him, a sphere of red light crackling between its hands, which was then flung at his chest a moment later. "You won't take Professor Loki away! I won't let you!"
The small ball of fire crackled for a moment against his breastplate and then vanished; it was not strong enough or hot enough to really do more than sting for a moment. Thor looked with astonishment at his new opponent. It was a little girl, perhaps fifteen to twenty for an Aesir child - less for a mortal, he suspected. She stood barely waist-high to him, crowned with sunny blond hair over a stormy, scowling face as she readied another fireball.
"Illyana, stop this at once!" Loki called out, a note of real alarm in his voice.
"No! I won't let him!" the girl - Illyana - replied, and let loose a wash of green sparking energy, which Thor had to bat away and stamp out. With a shriek of frustration, the child flung herself at Thor and began kicking and punching at his legs.
"What is this?" Thor asked, bewildered, trying to fend off the small yet furious assault. "Why is this child here?"
Loki lunged forward and grabbed the girl around the shoulders, hauling her away to a safe distance. "She's here because she's one of my students here!" he snapped back, sounding deeply exasperated. "Because this is a school. Honestly, Thor, where did you think you were?"
"But..." Thor realized he had known, or should have known. He remembered back at the beginning of the confrontation, when Storm had said that he was disturbing class sessions. And Loki, too, had said that he was a teacher here. But those references had not made sense to him at the time, and so he had ignored them - until he was faced with incontrovertible evidence that this was, indeed, a school.
The realization shook him more than anything in his previous conversation had - as he realized how careless he had been with his wind and lightning in close proximity to such vulnerable targets. This was not the terrorist enclave that had been described to him on the radio, not the breeding-ground for ravening monsters he had been led to expect; this was a school, and Loki really was a teacher ("professor," the little girl had called him) to the children here. Loki had not been lying - at least, a cynical part of him cautioned, not about that.
Nothing about this made sense, and Thor did not know how to react, not with his accustomed battle-mode crumbling around him. He could not harm a child, not even a mutant child, no matter how determined she seemed to be to rip his armor open with her bare hands.
A new figure appeared on the edge of the clearing, and Thor blanched and grabbed for Mjolnir as he took in its appearance: dark-blue and furry, with head and limbs like a human's but running along on all fours like a beast. It (he) hopped into one of the surviving trees, swung upside down from a stripped-bare branch, and casually said "I say, old bean, could you use some help out here?"
"I could have used some help in there," Loki snapped, still struggling to contain his armful of hellion child. "Hank, what were you thinking, letting Illyana get in the middle of this? She could have been hurt!"
"Loki, she can teleport," the Beast protested, sounding wounded. "Which you taught her to do, so don't blame me. I couldn't exactly stop her, especially not after she heard that you were going to be taken away -"
"You were listening?" Loki interrupted, sounding scandalized.
The beast coughed uncomfortably, and swung around on the branch to a different position. "We-ell, Whisper may have helped amplify your conversation so we could listen in. Had to know if things were going to go pear-shaped, you know. But she didn't really need to magnify much - your conversation was quite emphatic all on its own."
"I told you, I can handle this," Loki snapped. "The rest of you, stay out of it!"
More and more strange figures were appearing around the edge of the circle - some of them human-looking, like the red-haired woman who smelled faintly of burning limestone, and others even stranger than the beast, like the yellow-eyed demon with the long pointed tail that appeared in a sudden clap of air by Loki's other side.
This was getting out of hand. Thor gritted his teeth, stepped forward, and grabbed Loki's elbow. "Enough!" he roared. "Loki is my brother, and he will be coming with me. None of you can stay a Prince of Asgard about his duties!"
Loki twisted and broke from his grip, but in the process he managed to lose hold of the little girl. "Yes I CAN!" she shrieked, and raised both hands, which were crackling with a yellow-white light.
There came a fhwazm noise from somewhere below Thor's feet - and suddenly the ground beneath his feet vanished and he was falling. He had a brief, startled vision of Loki and the rest of the mutants, and the school, rushing upwards around him - before he was falling through clear, empty air.
Astonishment kept him paralyzed for a moment, and he tumbled through the sky, catching a wheeling glimpse of rough green-covered hills below him. Far below. Thor had enough experience in flying to know that he was at least a mile up in the air, if not more.
Fortunately that gave him plenty of time to steady himself, bring Mjolnir to bear and fling her in a new trajectory across the sky. He scanned the ground below him, seeking a familiar landmark, but could find none; he was nowhere near the school where he had confronted Loki.
That little witch! he thought furiously, but he could not truly bring himself to be angry at a child. Indeed, he thought with some reluctant admiration, she was quite skilled for a mortal of her tender years.
As she should be, if Loki really was her tutor.
The long flight through the clear empty air did have one advantage; it gave Thor time to think, to sort out the confusing events of the last hour and try and make some sense of the new, radically skewed perspective that had been forced on him.
By the time he spotted a black aircraft on the horizon - from its unique shape, he knew it could be none other than the Helicarrier - Thor had figured out one thing beyond any doubts.
He angled himself to land on the Helicarrier deck, which wheeled about to meet his heading and then hovered, waiting for him. Standing on the hard tarmac where the planes took off and landed was Commander Fury, hands shoved in his long black coat and looking none too pleased about the situation.
Nor was Thor. He pulled up to land on the paved surface without cratering it, and shipped Mjolnir back into his belt. Squaring his shoulders, he turned to meet Nick Fury's eyes without flinching. "You," he said, "owe me some answers."
Fury nodded slowly, his eye meeting Thor's; there was a furious, almost apoplectic anger burning behind that eye that manifested itself in a kind of perfectly-controlled calm. "I suppose I do," he said. "And you owe me some, including what the hell you were thinking when you decided to kick off another war."
~tbc...