So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name along with a place to post suggestions.
Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album listed on my profile page too.
DAY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0542 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
NORA
Green was the last color that captured my attention, but now I have moved up a level on the scale. Green gloves to blue skin.
There was no shimmering light on the edges of this like the rest of his magickal displays, and that difference meant something, I knew that even if I didn't know what it was exactly. Perhaps this wasn't magick, or at least a very different kind.
The light blue color rose up his throat, and over his chin all the way until it slid beneath his hairline, revealing raised designs on his skin that might be scars of their own if they didn't look so clean. It followed the retreat of the other color, a color I just assumed without thinking about, was meant to be the natural hue of his skin. Caucasian pink vs maya blue. Now I don't know which one is the 'real' one.
Green vs red. His eyes were closed as the blue crawled higher, almost with the beginnings of a grimace on his features. Then he opened them with a look of pained reluctance and made them meet mine. Part of the myriad of emotions in his eyes looks afraid. They weren't that wild shade of forest green I've become so used to anymore. Now they are vermillion red, with a diluted shade of it covering the whites of his eyes.
All that, anger, and anxious fear, and desperation I felt a moment ago fades. I still feel it, but buried under a mountain of numbing wool, and his simple sentence. "Now you see me." You'd think, by his voice I sent those feelings to him. "Now you know."
Now I know. There so much to that sentence. There's his tone, angry and sad, as if he is disappointed with himself for showing me this, as if he didn't mean to; the words that he spoke before. "...I do know how it feels to learn this truth. I was deceived once too." There's a conclusion in there and it actually makes me hurt for him just thinking about it.
I'm a feather pillow, Clint was right when he jokingly called me that. I always have been and will be, I know what sorrow, shame, pain and fear are like and I hate seeing it in others. Its why I always put so much effort into being there for people, any and all people. So the idea that he really does know, that something similar happened to him, it breaks my heart. That worries me a little, how easily those feelings came and how true they feel.
"Loki..." I speak one word, and then I stop. I didn't think about it, but my hand rose out of... concern or curiosity I suppose, and it got the strangest reaction out of him. He pulled away from me! This man has been pushing and pushing to touch me more and more, and he actually just recoiled from the possibility of my hand with a look of worry in his eyes and a stern note note in his voice.
"No." He councils me with a softer voice as he watches me stiffen at that word. "You must not touch this Arnora." The sentence repeats back in my head with a question mark at the end. This? Not 'me' or 'my skin' but THIS? Its his skin, isn't it? Does he really hate that part of him? How could someone feel that way?
I hadn't even noticed it because the transformation was so stunning it consumed all of my attention, but across the few steps that divide us the air grew just cool enough to form the goosebumps that are now leaving my skin.
"Thats it, isn't it?"Loki has always felt cool to the touch, and in this form he actually cools the air around him and refuses to let me touch him. It explains everything. I have hand shaped scars enveloping my thigh. He didn't burn my skin to stop the bleeding, he froze me.
"You can't control it, can you?" I spoke the question before I could think about it, and if had I would have stopped myself. Its met with him breathing out an angry hiss between clenched teeth.
"I could encase every man and the very ground they stand on in ice, do not question my strength Arnora, it is most unwise right now!"
"I wasn't." I offer back honestly and then stop talking, because I'm not sure what else to say, and don't want to say the wrong things anymore. Apparently that in itself was the right thing.
Loki closes his eyes and with a small shake of his head and breaths out a frustrated sigh before he turns and lets himself land heavily in the armchair on the other side of the pillar by the bed . "My life has driven the delicacy out of me. I've frightened you with that, I'm sorry. You will not see it again, you have my word."
I say nothing to that, I can't. I just look at him as he rests his elbow on the arm and pinches his temple between the fingers of one hand in frustrated silence. I've frightened you with 'that'... You will not see 'it' again. He just keeps confirming how he views himself, and it bothers me more each time. I can understand that some people don't like the person their life choices made them, but he seems to be disgusted by the very body life gave him, and that I can't understand.
That makes me find my tongue again. "I've met red..." Hearing me speak I watch his visible eye open again behind the cage of his fingers and look at me as I continue. "...Yellow and black people Loki. I've even seen green once." He gives me even more of his attention as I push on, his hand abandoning his face and dropping to his lap as he regards me with a combination of suspicious curiosity. "I'm light brown, and you can turn blue. I'm not afraid of the color of your skin Loki, any more than any other skin."
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0549 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
LOKI
I don't know what to make of that. I know what I want to, though. I want it to be as true and as simple as she makes it sound. That she accepts me and all of me without question or fear, even the part that marred her for life.
I despise the filthy Jotun blood in me. Fate, and the teachings of a father who wasn't mine made sure of that. If I had a memory of it, time or Odin took it away long ago, and I have only that deceiver's word, and my knowledge of history to go by.
I am a frost giant, but I am small, and I do not share all their traits. I am impure by their standards. The genetic blame must lie with my mother, who ever she was, for I stood before Laufey and looked on him three times before I killed him.
Once the Jotuns were not such a segregated society. Before their ill conceived invasion of Midgard and the Unification Vanaheim into Asgard they were allies with the Vanir. An asgardian noble tried to orchestrate the assassination of the young sow of a princess, Freya. It led to war and the Vanir married off many of their daughters to gain the strength of Jotun soldiers.
The Jotuns in turn craved the magical abilities in Vanir blood. Those beasts had a way in to touch those women, a way I do not know. They made the half Jotuns. A bloodline they would later wage genocide upon.
Vanir blood manifests in a unique way when mixed with Jotun blood. It could hide as a recessive trait for generations, and then suddenly reappear because Vanir blood did not dilute as it was passed down the bloodline.
Without knowing my birth mother I lack true evidence, but I don't need it to know my theory is sound. I carry Vanir blood, enough that it affects my appearance and I was cast aside to starve in the cold that wouldn't kill me.
I want to believe her, that this Jotun flesh does not disgust or frighten her, but I know it should. On Laufeys orders every half Jotun man, woman, and child on Jotunheim was cut down, and every Vanir wife as well. Her people despise 'my' people, as they should. "Your words are kind, but you do not understand what you ..."
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0553 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
NORA
"Please don't say that." I barely let him finish. Closing my eyes to keep my self control I let out that plea for him to stop. I hate those words, so much. People have always treated me different once they knew about my conditions, and accepted that that because I knew they did make me different, but I still hated it. I stopped being a normal person in their eyes and became some broken thing they pitied.
Its like the second they knew, they became part of a different reality. I still looked like them, and talked like them. Ate, slept, and breathed like them, but I wasn't like them. They threw out that phrase so casually, as if I didn't think or feel things like they did, as if they actually believed, no matter the subject, that I 'would not understand'.
I always bore it with silent grace because I was a loyal and dedicated agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. They sacrificed a mission to save my life, and for two and a half years they didn't pull the plug even though I showed no sign of my coma breaking. I owed them my life, even if I had to start over and spend every day clawing my way up hill. The least I could do was smile. But Loki isn't S.H.I.E.L.D.
"I've heard that so much from people and I hate it." And I'm tired of pretending. "My words aren't kind, they're honest." I had his attention already, but I seem to gain it more with that sentence, and his disbelief as well if his eyes are true. It wouldn't surprise me if he did doubt me. A man who schemes can only see the schemes in others.
"My best friend slept and hasn't aged in seventy years." Steve Rogers. "I've met a man with the world's greatest battery keeping him alive." Tony Stark. "My brother almost shot a 'god'." Clint Barton and Thor. "And my sister was almost killed by the world's angriest man." Natasha Romanoff and Dr. Bruce Banner. "You are different Loki, but I've met different before." I am an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, we do not lead normal lives. "I don't know how they treated you, or what prejudice Asgard has toward what you are, but I don't share it."
"No..." There is an eternity of silence between us where he just looks at me in stillness. Then he smiles. The barest curve at the edge of his mouth. "You do not. You are better that, you have always been better then that."
NOTES FOR THE READERS:
This chapter comes with a bit of fan theory history that I thought up myself. Now we all know that the Jotuns once attacked Earth, I personally think it was to colonize it for our resources (perhaps due to a lack or shortage of their own), not to destroy it. We also all know that Asgard came to our defence and they fought, costing lives on both sides, which naturally leads to animosity between two groups. However, no matter how noble the Asgardians are, I don't think they would hate the Jotuns enough to label them the 'monsters parents tell their children about at night' just because they tried to conquer a realm that wasnt even their own. It just seems like there has to be more to it. So by combining a bit of mythology based history with comic based history this is what I have thought up.
During the Vanir-Aesir war, when Vanaheim was its own separate kingdom, the Vanir allied themselves with the Jotuns because the vanir wanted their physical strength and battle, ans the Jotuns wanted the Vanirs magickal abilities. This alliance was solidified by a large number of political marriages between the races (something that was less taboo back then). However after the Vanir lost the war and were assimilated into Asgardian rule, the alliance with Jotunheim was broken. this didn't stop many of these couples from remaining together on Jotunheim, because many of them had children together by now.
Fast forward to the Jotun invasion of Midgard. Laufey, the current king of Jotunheim saw these half Jotun children, and their Vanir mothers is both a bargaining chip and a potential problem. In a conflict with the Asgardians (and now the Vanir is well) their loyalty could be with Asgardians, which would lead to infighting among the ranks, and open rebellion if they defeated Asgard. So Laufey threatened to kill them all, on the hopes it would keep Asgard form interfering, and if it wasn't enough to keep them away, then it would still be a chance to remove a section of the population with questionable loyalty.