Death in Life
MABalas
Posted: 10/17/2017
Chapter: 6/8
Harry wasn't sure what he expected from Loki Liesmith. He was a more than half mad, self-proclaimed god.
Whatever Harry had expected, it hadn't been...this.
They were uncannily alike. The idea of that had been slow coming, something Harry picked up on as hours spread into days and days into weeks. Time became meaningless as Harry and Loki fell into an easy routine of study and meditation. It was in that routine that the slips of the tongue revealed the kindred history.
Harry still wasn't sure how he felt about that.
Loki had already taught Harry more about the raw magic of the universe than what he learned in all his years at Hogwarts. Loki had also shown his cracks. Moments where his mind slipped to lost family, mistakes on a planet-wide scale that led him to this end. If only Hermione were here to help Harry learn-
Smack!
"Fuck!"
Harry pressed a hand to the stinging cut on his forehead. He could already feel it closing.
"Did you just throw a rock at me?"
"More meditating, less daydreaming," Loki answered. He didn't even bother looking up from the notes he was making at the table across the room.
"How in Merlin's name do you always know when I'm distracted?" Harry muttered more to the room than the dark haired god. "I don't even move!"
"If you listened when I told you to meditate you would have the same skill. And then you would know that is a stupid question. For Death's 'judge and jury' you complain more than I expected."
Merlin's tits, it was like having a petty, male version of Hermione in permanent research mode around.
Harry had the meditation down a few weeks later.
Once he knew the pathway he found it easy to slip into that still space in his mind. From there it was child's play to move the natural raw magic found on any planet to his will. He had always been good with the practical side of magic.
Learning to harness the natural magic also made it annoyingly easy to track the focus of any living being close by as their latent energy fields interacted with the background flow of raw magic. It was a sense similar to his Guide skills but on a more physical level, like watching magnetic fields pull and repel.
He could see the fields disperse out when Loki was unfocused and relaxed, and tighten in when he was aware and on task. As the only living things left to watch were himself and Loki….
Loki's smirk when Harry came out of the meditation with the skill was the 'I told you so' Harry despised.
For Loki's people, the Jotun, the distinction between a Shield and Guide was important.
What earth had called Primitives, what had made Harry undesirable, was highly sought and the hallmark of a Shield in Jotunheim. A Shield was a Hunter's right-hand, an equal partnership of power and skill. Strong Shields were rare.
"A treasure among treasures," Loki sneered one day.
A treasure to use and lock up again, Harry finished in his mind. Harry knew the words were a quote. There was too much pain and bitterness for anything else.
It gave Harry a vivid and uncomfortable insight into Loki's past and exactly how the god knew so much about Shields.
Harry was almost afraid to know with certainty one way or the other.
Becoming a Shield meant learning to combine the energy fields of the raw magic of the planet with his own magic and his Gift.
It was the same idea behind experimental military cloaking using light to distort actual shapes and forms. Only, Harry was using raw and innate magic to distort the Gift.
Loki trained Harry from the ground-up not only how to hide but how to be a Shield-not a Guide. For Loki's people, the Jotun, the distinction between a Shield and Guide was important. What earth had called Primitives, what had made Harry undesirable, was a mark of power and the hallmark of a Shield in Jotunheim. A Shield was a Hunter's right-hand, an equal partnership of power and skill. Strong Shields were rare and highly sought. A treasure among treasures, Loki often sneered.
Gifted were a touchy subject for them both, it seemed.
Learning how to cloak and how to Shield was far harder than manipulating the raw magic and still a work in progress, but it was everything and more Harry would have never learned from the Center.
"Again."
Harry tried to catch his breath. He had lost track of the hours or even days Loki had forced him to construct the shields again and again as the Asgardian hurled mind magic at him.
Without any sort of break.
They were both hardier than a human, but Harry was forcing his shields and the raw magic he had learned to conform in ways they never had before. He had to break decades of bad habits created instinctively as a child and reshape them to Loki's training if he wanted any hope of being a true Shield. It wasn't a bloody walk in the park.
Loki didn't give him the chance to recover. Harry flinched as a particular shade of green spell caught the corner of his eye.
His exhausted mind flashed to Voldemort and the Killing Curse at the worst moment. Death's power flared out in a black cloud to catch the spell before Harry caught up.
The tendrils viciously shredded the pure magic in midair.
Harry and Loki both stared as what remained of the spell faded out of existence to be absorbed by the streams again. The black tendrils still hovered warningly around Harry's body.
"That is useful," Loki finally said.
Harry stared at Loki in disbelief.
He could kill magic. He could bloody kill magic.
Loki grinned manically back, as if he knew what Harry was thinking and found it the height of hilarity. A silver ball of power formed in the god's palm.
"Now do it again."
The magical and Gifted knowledge was not without its cost. A small price, really, when Harry considered the twisted mind of his new flatmate: a cross of Luna's eerie knowledge, Hermione's wit, Harry's own sense of practical jokes, and with an all-in-all more unstable bend.
And no, that wasn't just a generalization on Harry's part. A few moments were defining in Harry's list of Loki's characteristics.
One. Loki taught Harry the raw magical craft from both Asgardian and Jotunn cultures. The spells and runes were even older than the ancient egyptian Harry had studied on earth. Much of it had no direct way to teach. Either Harry followed the intuition of the forms...or Loki killed him.
Harry was lucky he had infinite chances.
Two. Loki used him as a convenient test subject, often without warning, of new spells or potions. Not all of these were successful.
Harry visited with Death quite often.
And three and four. Harry more than lost count of the times Loki would give him a cheshire grin right before he transported Harry onto some godforsaken side of the planet to find his own way back to their cave home.
And it was always a new spot every time.
With a ward against apparition.
(Harry became exceptionally well versed in magical tracking and wayfinding after the first few times he was stranded at the top of a frozen rock and left to die.)
There was only so much Loki could teach Harry, however. After they discovered Death's trick with killing spells, Loki encouraged Harry to explore the power. They began to include Death's shadows in their sparring and training.
Harry discovered offensive and defensive skills; killing magic was the least of it. Death's shadows could be turned into a physical shield at Harry's will. They could be used to cloak and disguise Harry's form. They could be used to eavesdrop on Loki while he brewed his next concoction he called a potion and they could be used to physically manipulate the environment, like an extension of Harry's own arms.
Harry mercilessly moved Loki's notes, books, and potion ingredients around once he found out about that skill. The physical exhaustion after using the shadows that way-making the intangible tangible and as dextrous as his own fingers-was worth every moment of aching muscle in the face of Loki's open aggravation when he tried to find his misplaced things.
Harry learned to integrate the power with his own magic. He learned to harness only as much as he needed rather than the power by firehose he initially had to deal with.
Then Harry discovered the puffs.
Harry called them puffs, because at first that's all they looked like. Shadow puff balls that Harry could pull out of Death's power around him like pulling a stray thread from a sweater. A thread that stretched taught and snapped into a semi-sentient ball of shadow-colored fluff. No faces, no appendages, just…fluff.
They were made of Death's shadow but powered by his own magic. Harry could feel his connection to each one. Nothing like emotion or pain, just the sense of his magic animating the puff, a piece of his magic inside making itself known to him. It was enough to give him a sense of where each puff was at any point until they either killed themselves-walking too hard into a wall was enough to do that, they weren't the hardiest or brightest-or Harry called them back to be reabsorbed into the shadow.
It was the first of his skills Harry did not share with Loki, mostly because he had no idea what to do with it. Then Harry made a puff out of boredom one day, and had the thought to set it on the task of tidying up his sleeping area.
The puff morphed as Harry watched into something much more like a cross between a house elf and a goblin. The shadow deepened, became more, somehow, and Harry simply knew that it was suddenly a hell of a lot hardier than any of the puffs.
It efficiently tidied up Harry's sleeping area like Harry had set it on a secret mission to save the world instead of making the bed. It used Harry's own magic powering it to magically clean the clothes and sheets and fold them all and make the bed. Everything was perfectly made in less than ten minutes. At that point Harry watched the more-than-a-puff-now step into the shadow cast at the end of the bed from the candlelight and simply disappear. A moment later Harry felt rather than saw it smush itself back into the shadows still around him from Death's power; it was the zing of his magic returning home that alerted him to its movement at all.
That was pretty damn useful.
Harry took great pleasure setting the goblin-puffs (not very creative but that had never been his strength anyway) to harass Loki at all hours of the day for the next few weeks. It was even more perfect that the goblin-house-elf shaped shadow puffs could immediately disappear into the surrounding darkness as Harry instructed them to not be caught doing anything.
Loki could never actually catch (what he had to assume was) Harry doing anything.
It was brilliant.
Creating the puffs seemed to have no limits. He filled his entire room with them one night simply to see if he could. And he had an army of black puff balls rolling and tumbling all over each other. A bunch of them poofed out in the ruckus and were replaced with three more. It was alarming how easy they were to make, actually.
For whatever reason they also reminded him of tribbles and really, how did he even remember seeing that episode one holiday at Hermione's house? Good thing it only took a good poke or jostle to send the puffs back to Harry's shadows or that would be a terrifying thought.
The goblin-puffs were another story. No amount of poking, prodding, or even a blasting curse on one memorable occasion, could slow them down. They either finished what they were set, or Harry had to make the direct effort to call them back.
Harry never called them back.
More than one chair was pulled out either right before or while the god sat, potions ingredients were switched mid-brew, and complex notes exchanged for ridiculous song lyrics-in pig latin.
It was an all over balance, befriending Loki while staying away from the man's many triggers. The god had lived for centuries to collect them, after all.
Some days Harry could almost see the glimpse of a Loki unburdened by the life he'd endured. Someone too clever, with a love of verbal games and practical jokes; someone who simply needed a friend.
Other days Harry thought Loki had finally snapped. He paced manically, spoke rapidly in languages even Harry's ability as Master of Death had to take a moment to translate, and lashed out at anything and everything in his path. Tables were flipped, papers shredded and burnt, and even the skyline altered when he popped out to obliterate a mountain range-though that extreme measure was usually reserved for the really bad triggers.
Like SHIELD.
Harry had no idea Loki had been involved with them, though he should have expected it after Director Fury working with the magical governments and trying to recruit Harry for their little hero venture. Of course SHIELD would want their hands on an alien.
Harry had no idea what Director Fury did, but the one time Harry had got even halfway through 'Director' Loki had frozen the entire room-with Harry in the center of it.
He'd really had enough of death by ice. He never tried to broach the subject of the Director again.
Certain colors were a trigger for the god, much like his own aversion to the particular shade of Avadra Kedavra green. Loki's was a particular shade of icy blue.
Loki broke Harry's hand to cut off that spell.
Thunder, or at least this planet's version of it with the constant cold, was another trigger. In many ways it was worse than all of the others. Loki didn't lash out or become violent. He withdrew completely into himself.
Loki would remain silent for days afterwards, nearly catatonic while he was lost in memories of his fallen brother. Harry knew only of the brother from brief stories, some less than two sentences, of his foolishness, vanity, and lack of intelligence. Loki never spoke his name, only insults for identifiers. Harry highly doubted the man's name had been 'hammer-wielding ox with less forethought than a household hound.'
For all of the negative connotation, however, Loki could not hide the truth from Harry. Loki's eyes were most haunted when he told those stories, even less than two sentences long.
Loki's eyes were always full of bitter grief and unspoken apologies long after the thunder was gone.
Time was meaningless while Harry learned. He had a purpose. A goal.
What Harry could never adjust to was the silence.
Earth had always had a background chatter, a sense of all of the living entities. Earth had a heartbeat and breath. Now there was only one heartbeat. One soul to watch. Finally accepting his power over life and death didn't do much when the balance was already so buggered.
Harry mentioned the background silence to Loki one day.
The response was very much unproportionate to the question. At least, Harry thought so. Whatever trigger Harry had hit, it was excessive.
The god's magic snapped out and met Harry's own in a blinding display of green and gold power fueled by twisted rage. Harry had no idea how long they stood lashing power against power, skill against skill. At one point tendrils of Death's power actually tried to intercede, but Harry had no desire to kill Loki.
The last Asgardian and Jotun was an injured animal backed into a corner and lashing out on instinct. This was lancing the wound with centuries of festering pain pouring out in an infected, bloody mess-regardless of whatever the original wound had been.
By the end of it they were both exhausted. Loki had passed out from the stress and exhaustion and Harry had a gaping hole in his chest being studiously knitted back together by the shadows. It actually left a faint scar at the end of it.
Harry supposed magic literally ripping into his chest and breaking his ribs to try to get at his heart over and over again would do that.
That day was the first time Harry saw Loki dream.
Harry never saw Loki sleep. He must have been leaving some sort of double or illusion while he went off to another part of the planet to rest, because Harry definitely would have noticed the thrashing and hoarse cries and muttered names before.
Most notably were the names Jormungandr, Fenrir, and Hela. Notable because Loki seemed to be dreaming of children. Harry's knowledge of Norse mythology was virtually zero, so he had no idea where the three fell in the scheme of things. Harry knew it was bad, however.
Because Loki dreamed of children, and loss, and Ragnarok.
Loki dreamed of his own children, their murders and loss, and the end of the world as he knew it.
Harry never said anything to Loki about his dream or his possible children, but it did give Harry the courage to ask another question that had been growing for a while.
"How do you know so much about Guides and Shields? Sentinels and Hunters?"
Loki paused in writing the observations he had been taking on a new ritual. It was something Loki had been working through for the last few weeks now. Harry hadn't bothered to try to figure out its purpose yet. He was sure Loki would want to test it on him soon enough.
The silence dragged on, and Harry wasn't really expecting an answer. But he got one.
"When I was but a child coming into my power I learned the unpleasantness of being Gifted, as you call it," the god started slowly. "I learned what it was to have my trust betrayed and my mind stolen. I learned to use my skills to hide and camouflage myself because I refused to ever bow to any being, especially a Hunter who sought to control me." His smile turned biting as he watched Harry. "We can see how well that turned out."
He waved a hand in the air and Harry had to take a step back. Harry had suspected, but the truth was more than that. Loki was a Shield, and a damn strong one. Almost as strong as Harry.
"You are the first being I have revealed myself to in over a millennium," Loki said almost thoughtfully.
That was a declaration of friendship and trust if Harry had ever heard one.
"The Hunter?" Harry asked carefully.
Loki grinned, and Harry was happy he wasn't truly an enemy. There was far too much vicious joy in that smile. "I ripped the bond out of my mind and destroyed him."
That was it.
Loki waved his hand again as he turned back to his observations, cloaking himself so completely Harry still couldn't sense his Gift, even actively looking for it. Harry finally gave up and went back to studying the tomes Loki had crafted for him.
Harry never stopped thinking about Loki's words. Loki had ripped out the bond, which meant Loki had trusted whoever the Sentinel was. Someone as strong as Loki would have been able to block him otherwise. The Sentinel had preyed on a young boy's trust and twisted it into ownership.
Harry had seen those Sentinels on earth. Men and women who thought themselves superior because of the strength of their Gift and their heightened senses. Sentinels who found Guides to be delicate dolls to coddle and protect or nothing but tools to bring out and use before storing again. As if the Guides couldn't think for themselves or were less than their Sentinel.
Loki didn't have to explain the cost of ripping out that bond. It would have left the Sentinel's mind completely broken. If they had survived that they would have been feral. Feral Sentinels had to be put down for everyone's safety if there was no bonded Guide to pull them back.
There was no telling what scarring had been left in Loki's shields and mind. If he had been a child when it happened...Harry understood Loki a little more. It was always the forgotten, the betrayed, and the lost who built the best mirror to redirect the world.
The younger it started, the more ornate the glass grew.
Time was meaningless to them, both powerful and timeless in their own right. Each studying crafts only time could inure in their skills and minds.
Each that little bit mad in their own way.
Some days Loki would disappear and Harry would watch a mountain crumble on the horizon or a storm rage on the plains.
Some days Harry would stand in the freezing wind, staring into the galaxy beyond as he sought even a single sense of life outside their rock. Anything else to listen to.
There was nothing.
Neither of them truly required food, only melted snow for water every few days. Neither of them dared sleep until their bodies would not function otherwise. Neither wanted to face their memories.
It was a steady, simple way to be. Neither demanded more than what was needed from the other. Neither would mention the slip of a tongue on nostalgic days, or the half-finished sentences when the next words were too painful to voice.
It was never lost on Harry that he had been kidnapped and coerced into becoming an assassin by a half-barmy norse god. Or that Harry had come to call the crazy bastard a friend.
...Or that Harry had never felt so in control of his own life before.
Harry eventually learned everything he could from Loki.
The final piece was Loki's knowledge of how to pass between the planets and planes of the universe, in the secret paths between worlds.
Loki never showed Harry the paths directly. The Titan's curse would not let him leave. But he showed Harry the door and explained the theory. Harry practiced his own version of it, utilizing his magic and Death's power to create something he called stepping. Not quite apparition, not quite using the paths, but something in between.
With that settled, Harry set out to finish the task of killing the Titan.
AN: Ugh, another rush job. Please let me know if you see any spelling/grammar issues. I didn't do my usual self-editing and need to come back to this one later. I made a promise to myself that I would not pick up Finding Fire again until I had this story finished. So it's getting done before the end of the month, dammit! I'm getting the One Piece bug again!