Lovefool
When it became too painful to examine the past, she curled up in the chair and cried. She hadn't just seen snippets of her time with Loki, but years of life with her sisters and parents—and family beyond that: aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, the people who got called Auntie and Uncle but were really her parents' oldest friends, or lived on the street she'd grown up on. She remembered Christmases and birthdays; chaotic summers with the girls running loose through the neighbourhood; fights and parties; hugs and trips to seaside towns and disappointed faces when school reports came home.
She'd believed when she was a teenager that her parents had little time for her, not when the sisters who'd come before her had already done everything—top of the class in school, university, careers, marriage, babies. She had nothing new to offer, and she was their last attempt at a boy, so she'd always carried an assumption that she was surplus to hindsight was painting everything in new tones, showing her it was her own doing—her and Loki's. Sometimes her parents had been fighting to keep a roof over their heads but they'd always made the time to tuck her in at night, read her stories, play the games her sisters refused to. If her mother couldn't share in her hobbies, it wasn't because she didn't take an interest, but because Alex had no hobbies to share. Just like the distance she'd kept with her sisters, since the day she'd vowed to stop talking about Loki. There couldn't be hushed conversations about first loves and first times because everything always came down to the man she kept a secret, and the distance that secret created never bothered him. Hell, he encouraged it.
Who was she? Her soul lay in two fractured halves, and the parts seemed so irreconcilable to her. Alex was a naive girl, completely in Loki's thrall. She'd abandoned her family, given up her whole future, for a man who'd never even told her he loved her. Asta was little more than a shell, but everything she'd done had been fleshing out her bones, and without her captivity no doubt that process would be much further on. She was braver, kinder, less self-centred. She saw Loki for the monster he could be. And yet, she was as much Loki's creation as her own, right down to her name. Even if she could get the two halves to fit together, she had no real identity, not when she subtracted his influence.
If she had sense, she'd walk away from Loki and never look back. The Asta half wanted to do exactly that. The sad part was that even with all that hindsight, Alex still yearned for him. She wept tears for the man he'd become, but she couldn't turn her back. Besides, she knew him well enough that it was never going to be as simple as convincing him to let her go.
When she'd exhausted herself, she climbed onto the bed and let sleep claim her, though her memories invaded even here, tangled up in dreams of a blood-red Tesseract. Her growling stomach woke her eventually, and she opened her eyes with trepidation, expecting a familiar figure at her bedside. Thankfully Loki was nowhere to be seen. The sun had set outside, but she could hear signs of life echoing up from the building around her. Fresh clothes were piled onto the chair, and the remains of the apple were gone.
It was Thor she found waiting outside her door when she opened it, dwarfing the stool he perched on. She fought the urge to drop to her knees when he turned to look at her. Even in jeans and a hoodie, he looked like a prince—though the smile he bestowed in her direction definitely put him in the realm of a Disney prince.
"Lady Alexandra, you are awake!"
"Yeah. I'm famished. Do you know where I can get something to eat?"
"Do not worry, I shall ensure nourishment is brought up directly. You should rest some more."
She expected him to scuttle off but instead he clapped a hand to a wristband and bellowed into it while she bit down a giggle—he yelled so loud he didn't really need the microphone in the device for anyone else in the tower to hear him.
She leaned against the wall by his stool. "Where is he?" she asked, focusing on scuffing up the carpet with her feet.
"Do you wish to see him? I can arrange for him to be brought here—"
"No, no, I'm good. I'm just surprised he's not around, what with all the fuss he made about staying near me."
"Ah. Yes." Thor frowned and picked at a thread on his jeans. "We had to restrain him."
"I thought he couldn't be restrained?"
"He was weakened enough after his escape attempt with you to attach the muzzle." At Asta's curious glance, he elaborated. "It restricts his magic. My father—Odin, the Allfather—created it."
"Yeah, I met him."
It was Thor's turn to be curious. "When you were tested?"
"Uh-huh. He was near enough the only Asgardian I ever met apart from your brother. The king of gods himself."
"Was he at least pleasant to you? I know sometimes he can be fiercer than he should."
"Oh, he was scary. But not evil scary. I just knew that he would do whatever was needed. Ruthless, I suppose. He seemed almost apologetic, when I lost."
"My father has a reason for everything he does. I know Idun has stated he ensured you could never pass the test, but whatever Loki's beliefs on the matter, I do not believe it was done to hurt you. Whether it was for your own good, or for the benefit of the realm, I cannot guess, but it was not done through ill intent towards you or my brother."
"Well, I don't think you'll convince him of that." She thought back on Odin's apologetic words when she lost. "Though I believe it."
The clatter of cutlery sounded from further up the hallway, and Thor rose to retrieve the tray of food when it arrived. He carried it into the room and Asta curled up at the foot of the bed. "You can bring your stool in, if you want," she said, and Thor beamed at the invitation.
The plate was covered in one of those gourmet lids, and though the food underneath it was an unfancy burger and fries, it earned the silver dome in the taste test. Thor seemed happy to watch her eat, his content smile never wavering.
"You're not what I thought you would be like," she said, wiping the grease from her mouth with a cloth napkin. The service in Stark Tower really was five star.
"Is that a good thing?" he asked with trepidation.
"Yeah, it is. For years, he didn't speak about you—any of you. I knew he was a prince but I didn't know what family he had, if any. It was only when we…grew closer…that he began to talk about you. The way he made it sound, you weren't much of a brother, and Odin wasn't much of a father. He always talked about how he was constantly overlooked in favour of you, no matter what he did. He made you out to be this big, dumb brute who never thought things through."
Thor winced. "He may have been right, in part. But I have grown, and I am learning to be a better man. We have not had an easy relationship of late, but it took me a long time to realise how undervalued he felt. Loki is too used to hiding his emotions even when it would aid him not to."
"I'm not sure even Loki knows how Loki really feels, deep down."
"Perhaps not. But there may have been a ray of truth to his resentment. After all, you can't lie to the god of lies, not even if you are the Allfather."
"I don't understand."
"Did he ever explain to you what a Jotun was?"
"Sure. He even took me to Jotunheim a few times, not long before we came to Asgard. It wasn't exactly an inviting place." Loki's stories of the frost giants had been of huge, cruel monsters with skin of ice, long enemies of the Asgardians. Given the frozen wasteland Jotunheim had been, it was easy to see why creatures like that would be the only things to survive there.
"He took you to Jotunheim?" Thor's expression twisted with horror. "He must have been very confident in his ability to protect you."
"Well, we only stayed for a few minutes, and we never actually saw any frost giants.I don't think he intended to be seen. I think he was trying a new spell—who knows what. He was always up to some scheme, even when I was very little."
"It's likely he was testing ways in and out of the realm without being detected. On the day of my coronation, we were invaded by a small group of Jotuns. They had managed to sneak into Asgard undetected." Asta had a horrible feeling she knew where this was going. "They were killed and their plans foiled, but in my arrogance I led a small party to Jotunheim, Loki among them. In truth, I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish, but all it caused was the fragmentation of a centuries old truce. Only the arrival of my father saved our lives, but I was banished here to Midgard for defying him."
"So that's how Coulson knew you."
"Indeed. While I was exiled, Loki discovered the truth of his birth. He isn't an Asgardian, not in blood. He's Jotun."
"He's…that can't be right. They're supposed to be ten foot tall. And have blue skin."
"He was an abandoned runt, the Jotun king's own son, considered too small to be a worthy heir. Odin found him as a baby in the aftermath of a battle on Jotunheim, and brought him home to raise as my brother, as I always believed him to be. As for his appearance, the way you see him is an illusion, magic woven so deeply he doesn't even realise he's doing it."
She supposed she should have a reaction to the knowledge that her once-betrothed was actually the kind of monster he'd spent hours regaling her with stories of. Disgust, probably. But it was hard to look at Loki as any more of a monster when she'd seen what he was capable of, how easily cruelty and murder came to him. Instead, the bone deep weariness just settled a little deeper.
"Is that what this," she gestured towards the window, out at Manhattan, "is all about?"
"In part. After he was informed I was due to be crowned, he put in place elaborate plans to prove to our father once and for all that he was as worthy as I was of the throne. That included showing the Jotuns how to enter Asgard. When I was gone, he led the Jotun king himself into our home, then slew him, and finally attempted to destroy all of Jotunheim using the power of the Bifrost. When this failed, he cast himself out, letting himself fall into an abyss rather than face father's censure. "
Asta pushed the tray away and swung her legs up so she could sit cross-legged. "I wish he'd let me meet you. I can't help wondering how different things would've been if he'd just been more open."
"Doctor Selvig taught me Midgardian proverb which I feel is apt: 'if wishes were horses, we'd all ride'. Loki is who he is. If he ever does learn to become more open, it will be a long process."
"I know. I doubt anything is going to dampen his jealousy. But I think we'd have been friends."
Thor's answering smile was bright enough to power Manhattan for a few weeks. "I would have liked that. I think we could still try to be, if you'd like that."
"I would. Very much. I don't really have many friends." If any.
Thor really wasn't the brute Loki had always painted him to be. It was painfully clear to her that despite Loki's sour disposition towards his family, despite the schemes that cost Thor so much, Thor loved Loki still. The Alex side of her knew what that was like all too well. And while he didn't have Loki's fierce intelligence, he wasn't an idiot—he was articulate and wise, in his own way. If he was straightforward—shallow, even—it was only a refreshing contrast to Loki's often murky depths.
"I have many friends to share with you. When we return to Asgard, I'll introduce you."
"It's kind of you to offer, but I don't think I'll be going."
"Surely you are! The Bifrost is still in need of repair, so you would not be able to travel between the worlds with ease. Loki believes you have made your choice, and he's made the way he feels about you abundantly clear."
"Hmm."
"You can't be as hesitant in your feelings as you appear, not if you chose immortality for him."
"I was naive when I made that decision, and he hadn't tried to take over the planet I live on."
"But what of the choice you made just today? If you didn't want to be with him for eternity, you would have refused that apple, surely."
"What does the apple have to do with anything?"
A bell rung in the back of her head, calling memories forward: Odin explaining the rules of the test to her—the red apple meant she lost her memories of Loki, the golden apple meant forever. Panic was already bubbling up inside her as Thor responded.
"The apple Idun brought granted you immortality."
A/N: Same deal as last time - you review, you get a teaser of the next chapter. Because I'm nice like that.