The floral pattern on the skirt of her dress was a fragile kind of contrast to the sword hilt tucked between her cold hands. It was as if they posed her for a portrait, a final show of strength and majesty before she was truly gone forever, a veil draped gently over her face. Flower petals filled the basin of the boat that sailed away with her, traveling slowly down the stream from the palace gates. These traditions were easy to read about. To see the black letters on a white page. However, it was much more hollowing in person.
Thor held Jane's hand at his side as the archer took aim, the end of his arrow lit aflame. The arrow was launched as the boat reached halfway across the water from the edge. It's glow was a single light in the dark as it soared through the air, getting smaller and smaller until it reached its target, and the boat was sent up in flames. Cassandra's body involuntarily lurched. Frigga was dead, she knew—still, knowing it was her that burned on the boat left an uncomfortable feeling at the base of her skull.
The water was soon filled with boats that followed Frigga's. They, too, were all set aflame with burning arrows as all of Asgard looked on from the shore. And as Odin's scepter hit the ground with a soft thud, Frigga's body was a spray of sparkling light that lifted into the night sky, toward the stars. The boat that carried her tipped over the edge of the harbor and disappeared into the expanse of space. But Frigga traveled high into the blue cloud of stars and space above, joining the essence of the universe as light itself.
It was difficult to watch, yet difficult to look away, a sheen of wet heat turning Cassandra's vision into a murky sheet of glass. All she could do was lift a hand, placing it carefully on the side of Thor's arm—an attempt to quietly express her sympathies, offer support—as the citizens sporadically positioned amongst the sea of on-lookers began releasing their orbs of light into the sky. Funerals were never easy. You would think, after being forced to sit through so many, they would start to get easier. But they don't.
If anything, they become more difficult. It gets harder to watch, to keep your composure, to stomach the heartache and the grief. The last funeral Cassandra attended was Jean's. Even now the memory was fresh, sitting in a chair on the lawn behind the mansion, the smell of tulips and petunias floating on the breeze from the gardens. Although she didn't personally know Frigga, the woman was beloved by her people and her sons alike, and the loss of her was felt by all. How could Cassandra not cry for them? Grieve for them?
They didn't deserve to lose her and Frigga didn't deserve to die. But she died a valiant death, and that seemed to be a relief to these people. Cassandra couldn't quite wrap her head around it, but she didn't have to—she just needed to stomach the rest of the service. And she did. Once the traditions had been completed, Thor escorted Cassandra and Jane back into the palace. He arranged sleeping quarters for each of them and ensured they both arrived at their rooms without issue by the end of the night.
Though she was finally alone, Cassandra couldn't help but still feel stiffened under a watchful eye. The room was too large. It's expanse was gold and beautifully decorated, with doors to a balcony along the far wall, and a rather large bed near the center against the wall. Stone steps lead up to it as if it were some kind of throne and she stared at them blankly. Everything was so pretty, so grand, so big. She felt so incredibly small in comparison.
Briefly, regret pooled with the ache in her chest. Perhaps she should've just stayed in London? What good had come of her being here? What did she do that couldn't have been accomplished by anyone else? Sighing a heavy but shaken breath, she reached up a hand to scrub at her face. How was she to sleep like this? She was genuinely exhausted, but her mind was alive with thoughts that kept her conscious like a hamster on a wheel, driven by some animalistic instinct to run despite all else. Still, her muscles trembled when she used them and her eyes burned from the shed tears and lack of rest.
Then, a gentle warmth blossomed in her chest as a new thought entered her mind. No one could stop her from attempting to sneak down into the dungeon. If she was caught, there was no telling what the consequences would be—but what if she wasn't? Instinctively, Cassandra pushed herself off the enormous bed and descended the steps. Having been to the dungeon fairly recently, the image of it was easy to find, but she had to be strategic. Appearing in the center of the hall was downright foolish and a sure way to get hauled out. Perhaps, even, placed in a cell of her own.
So, instead of someplace a little too obvious, she decided to appear on the left hand staircase, tucked out of sight of the main hall. It was much darker there than in her room, causing her to blink her eyes into adjustment before peering out of the stairwell. The apparent emptiness of the dungeon was shocking. After what just happened, there were no guards in sight. Did Odin simply consider the dungeon a safe-zone now that it was under control? Did he think that the Dark Elves wouldn't dare strike the same place twice?
That was possible. However, if it worked once, who was to say it wouldn't work a second time? And Odin's lack of security here would make that theory quite easy to put into practice. Either way, all she could do was shake her head at it. The man was grieving. Even angry old men deserve a certain level of allowance after the loss of a loved one. That's what she told herself to keep her own angered thoughts at bay as she trotted down the steps from the landing and started down the hall.
It wasn't far to Loki's cell. Not really. It'd felt much longer when she was being hurled toward it like a ragdoll earlier in the day. Now, it felt far too short a distance. Her own heart beat echoed in her ears like a heavy drum from the next room, steadily increasing in volume with every step, the inches clawing away at her lungs with talons until it burned to breathe. She didn't know what to expect from him, what state he would be in.
But when she came to stand at the bottom of the steps before his cell, he sat quietly in a chair along the right wall, turning the pages of a book as he reclined, legs crossed at the ankles. Relaxed and unbothered. In a second, the book clapped shut in his hands, and his eyes were on her as he stood from the chair. Her stomach clenched. "I knew you were fond of breaking rules, but this is quite the leap for you, is it not?" he questioned, rhetorical in the calm of his tone.
He stood on the other side of the translucent gold, hands behind his back in a relaxed position, and Cassandra couldn't help but squint. Yes, he looked calm—but it was stiff. The shoulders were too straight. Features too smooth. It felt reminiscent of an animatronic compared to what she knew. It felt wrong. Then, she remembered the tell. She moved quickly up the steps with a surge of determination and stared, ignoring the furrow of his brow, even rising on her toes to do so.
"Really? An illusion?" Cassandra dropped back onto her heels as her shoulders slumped, head tilting in an expression. "You know I can see through those."
He lifted his chin challengingly. "And what makes you think I'm an illusion?"
"Because you're showing me what you want others to see. You loved Frigga. There's not a single shred of grief on you. And you look more like an impersonator like this than the Loki I know."
It was then that he sighed an annoyed breath. His frame dissolved into green light, a line of which trailed over the room, every inch revealing something new. The table overturned. Books scattered over the white floor. The chair and it's pouf tipped aside and moved away two feet. Dark marks of black marring the white of the far wall. Then, finally, Loki. He sat on the floor as though he were one of the pieces of broken furniture, his back against the wall, disheveled hair a mess that clung oddly to his skin. Even from across the space of the cell, Cassandra could see the bloodshot look to his eyes.
"Is this what you'd rather see?" he asked. His voice was quiet, graveled and hollow. There was no real intonation to the words. They were as empty as his gaze. "Is this the real me, Cassandra?"
Pain struck the center of Cassandra's chest, reaching deep into her rib cage, and a small gasp escaped her. She could feel the back of her throat beginning to burn just looking at the state of him. The sound of her name from his mouth was a shivering rush of cold down her spine but her gut sunk and twisted with second-hand grief, pulling at her from somewhere behind her heart as it pumped just a little faster. Color caught her eye, then.
A splash of red amongst the white and green. Stamped on the floor in a single splot and smeared over the bottom of his foot, the leg extended along the flooring. Blood. "Loki…what did you do to yourself?" her head tilted, bending like a wilted flower as she struggled to swallow. It was as if the mad woman had finally become her. She'd clawed herself out through the rib cage, gnashing her teeth and weeping, ripping away any remaining sanity or reason until she'd possessed it all.
Cassandra teleported instinctively, a blink of an eye taking her to the other side of the gold, and the air felt different. It was stagnant and stale and clung to the insides of her lungs. But she walked quickly to cross the space and didn't hesitate to kneel amongst the mess, positioned at his injured foot. Loki's head tilted ever so slightly as he stared at her in a kind of muted bewilderment. Had she truly just come inside? How did she make it past the field?
Any other time, he would've barked a laugh. Of course their technology wouldn't be able to account for Midgardians with mutant powers. Though, his laugh would've been aimed more at Odin's incompetence than anything else. "I'll be right back," Cassandra announced, as she stood abruptly, startling him from his thoughts. She took two steps away from disappearing in a brief cloud of lavender wisps and smoke, and Loki exhaled a pained breath.
There was so much overshadowing the warmth trying desperately to bloom in the left side of his chest. She was beautiful, and caring, and selfless, and she was here—but the entirety of his body ached with grief. He couldn't feel the joy he had not many hours ago when he saw her the first time. Still, he wanted to. It only took a moment or two for her to return, a tattered strip of cloth dangling from her hand, and she was quick to return to her previous position on the floor.
"After all I've done to you, here you are. Tending my wounds," he spoke slowly, quietly. "Why?"
Cassandra worked the cloth around the pad of his foot carefully, making a haphazard kind of wrap out of it. "My mother died, too, once."
"Aren't you angry? Where's your rage? I've seen the way you lash out like a viper, and yet you cry for me—why?"
When she finally lifted her head to meet his gaze, his features held a shade of anger not quite befitting his pale skin. It contrasted with the way his eyes glistened beneath the harsh light. "If you want me to yell at you, I will—just not tonight," Cassandra shook her head once, voice certain. "I know, Loki. I know everything. That wasn't you in New York, not really. But who would believe you, right? I know it wasn't your fault, and I won't punish you for it like everyone else has. I'm just sorry it took so long for me to figure it out."
"You're sorry?" a scoff escaped him but it was weak, tears rolling over the edges of his eyes to trail down his cheeks, and the facade cracked like a porcelain doll.
"Did you think I would read your letter and suddenly stop loving you? I spent months in a lab in London, trying to get here so I could tell Odin the truth. I'm here for you, Loki," Cassandra inched forward on her knees, parting the mess of torn pages and wood pieces on the floor. "And I'm so…so sorry."
Her throat was all but sealed shut with a lump that burned and her vision was becoming glossy, eyes stinging at the edges, and her skin crawled with the urge to reach out. To touch him. To hold him. To console. But she held still there, so close yet still so unbelievably far. Loki's breath was hitching against his efforts to hold it all back, keep his composure in front of someone else. Though, it wasn't someone else, was it? It was Cassandra.
It was his Cassandra. The only beam of light shining out, calling to him through the wind and the rain and the utter darkness. "I should never have written that letter," he shook his head, blinking away enough water to see.
"We don't have to talk about that right now-"
"Yes, we do—you're going to be sent home when this passes and I may never see you again. You must know that I…I only wanted to keep you safe. You've seen today the dangers of my world—and in New York. I cannot protect you from it," Loki explained himself, looking only into the depths of her eyes, desperate for their comfort. "I loved Frigga, but not as I love you. I could not survive the grief of losing you, and you should not have to suffer for being with me. It's not fair."
Cassandra's brow furrowed, eyes squinting reflexively. "Fair? You wanna talk about what's not fair? How about you waiting to act on this fear of yours until after convincing me everything will be okay if I leave, and then I come home and you're not there? You say you can't survive losing me and then just throw me away? What about me, Loki? How am I supposed to live without you?"
Her voice rose with every question, the hurt in her gut contorting to frustration in the face of confrontation. She didn't know when, but her own tears had found their way to her cheeks, rolling hot trails along the skin toward her chin as if to mock her fury. What she asked was what he'd contemplated once before. Though, not quite like this. Not with the utter anguish of seeing the pain in her eyes, hearing the confusion and hurt and frustration in her voice that went straight to his chest like a bullet through the skin. He could feel the lead weighing him down.
A chain around his ankles in a swimming pool of emotion, pulling and pulling and holding him tight at the bottom, but his love for her was a golden hand reaching down through the endless blue. It warmed the left side of his chest as a fresh blanket over his shoulders. "I'm sorry," the words fell from his lips in a whisper he almost couldn't hear in his own ears. With a trembling breath, he surged forward and reached up his hands, palms coming to rest against either cheek to bring her in the remaining inch before their foreheads could touch. "I am so sorry, my dearest Cassandra."
Cassandra's fingers gripped the green at the shoulder blades of his tunic as her entire body shuddered. What a foreign concept forgiveness was. It had never felt so simple, and for that a nudge at the back of her mind poked and prodded for skepticism. The grudge of her hurt and anger was so deep rooted—was it even possible to remove such a weed from the dirt without leaving some of it behind? She didn't know, but she wanted to. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to, and that was enough for now.
The pads of his fingers felt cold against her skin but in a comforting way, like a polar bear basking in the return of winter's chill, and nothing but warmth sprouted from the place where their foreheads met. For a quiet moment—more desirable, forever—they could stay in it. The tears could drain until they dried from the inside and their lungs could fill with the familiar and cherished scents. There was no real anger here in this place. Only the contradictory comfort of shared grief.
Though, once the self-control the moment offered passed, Cassandra spoke, quietly as not to startle after the silence. "I'm not leaving Asgard without you," she stated. In it was offered a gentleness that only further cushioned its sentiment, and Loki exhaled.
"Then, I'm afraid, you will be stuck here forever," his words were a small quip, but they were quite serious.
"I don't care, as long as I have you. I'll tell them all the truth—I'll make them see it. Somehow. Or we could run. I could teleport us both out of here and you could come home with me."
The pad of Loki's thumb brushed gently over her cheekbone as a small, soft chuckle escaped, quiet with an upturn of his lips. "They would find us, my dear. But that would be rather thrilling, wouldn't it?"
"My brother gave me the deed to our childhood home. It's just sitting there in a field in Iowa. We could go there. Fix it up and make it ours," Cassandra allowed her eyes to close as she envisioned it. Paint cans and brushes, new carpet, and window cleaner. A fresh cut on the lawn, weeds plucked clean from the garden, the apple blossoms in bloom. All that terror and misery made into something new and exciting, replaced completely with only the treasured memories of her mother and the life they could create together.
It was almost startling just how fast the images of it all were conjured up in the back of her mind. Her life never carried much meaning or followed any specific direction—but this idea, as brief as it was, almost created enough serotonin to make it worth attempting. "What project would you start first?" he inquired, a smile to his voice despite the wash of his face. A welcome distraction.
"The master bedroom, so we had somewhere to sleep," Cassandra answered, in thought. "The hardwood would need re-sanded and stained, and the wallpaper hasn't been replaced since Barney was in diapers. We'd probably want to generally redecorate. The furniture is all from the seventies, I think."
A sudden thudding sounded, footsteps echoing from somewhere not too far. Cassandra's body startled, leaning back on her heels to twist in a quick motion, eyes snapping wide. But Loki was quick to gently grab at her shoulders, voice reassuring. "My love, they can't see us," he told her, and her head turned swiftly back toward him. "To the guards watching, I am merely reading into the night. They will not disturb us."
She sighed a soft breath of relief as her features relaxed again, the surge of worry draining out through her toes with the adrenaline of surprise. It was smart to conceal them behind an illusion—though, she wished she'd been spared the brief terror of potentially being discovered. She opened her mouth to make a somewhat sarcastic compliment on quick thinking, surely something about being two steps ahead, but the thought of the sentence fluttered away from her as her eyes settled on his face once again.
It was different now, the tears gone dry and turmoil subsided. However, the twist in her gut was not simply joy at the sight of a better state. Even the rekindling burn in the tissue of her lungs would agree. No, it was not that—it was a swirl of words and sentiments and dreams that gathered in her mind like a weightless cloud. A new kind of adoration on her tongue. "I love you. You know that, don't you?" she whispered instead.
"I do not doubt your affections," Loki gave a small shake of his head, scooping up her hands in his. "And you have my word—as long as the heart in my chest continues to beat, it is yours and yours alone. If you will have it."
"I don't want anyone else's."
Though she shook her head quickly, she found herself surging forward, pressing her lips to his as warm love and frigid desperation began to chase each other in her chest like a tornado of comfort and urgency. Her skin itched, satiated only by the chill of his closeness, the taste of saltwater and wine on his lips. You'd think it would be different after so long without it—but love was always the same. Genuine love never really changed. It adapted and grew with the hearts in question, yet it would always be uniquely home.
Fall and winter come to steal summer's light, but summer always returns again in its season, still just as warm and bright as the last time—full of excitement and new beginnings. It felt like nothing had happened in the time that passed, as though, somehow, it was simply the next day. Like she'd finally come home to find him there waiting for her as she should have the first time. All the emptiness and numb feelings, the sleepless nights and depression, guilt and regrets that tore holes in the spaces between her ribs every waking moment were struck silent.
Finally, her heartbeat was the only thing echoing inside her chest.
Cassandra couldn't help but wrap her arms around him and kiss him deeper. If she were to blink and wake to find it all disappeared, this is what she wanted to remember. Loki melted into her, her touch, her taste, her scent. His arms wound behind her torso, palms splayed against the back of her sweater, and he tugged her closer desperately as he reciprocated her gesture. She was pulled all but straight into his lap but neither of them quite noticed. Neither of them minded.
How could they? It'd been far too long. Loki had spent his days in near isolation with nothing to do but read, only stretching his legs to move from the bed to the chair—and if he was feeling really adventurous, maybe he'd perch himself against the corner by the front. There was nothing truly to do but think and regret and yearn with every fiber of his immortal being. Seeing her again, finally being given the chance to say what he couldn't for so many sleepless nights, was like water on the sun-dried earth.
A part of him always did truly melt around her, her warmth reaching even the coldest parts of the depths of him. Now, it felt like he just might catch fire, clawing to pull her closer even as her chest met his as he drank her in like liquor that burned the back of his throat, swirling like lava in his gut. Her hands moved into the mess of his hair, careful not to tug or pull, and the pads of her fingers massaged gently at his scalp as she inhaled deeply, lips lingering between kisses.
"Come to bed," his voice was a graveled and tired whisper, forcefully swallowing down an instinctual sound he couldn't allow himself to make. "Stay with me, Cassandra."
Again, their foreheads met, eyes however closed between them. "All night? Won't the magic wear off while you sleep?" Cassandra asked. She took deep but slow breaths to calm her lungs, ease the slosh of her stomach.
"You needn't worry, my love. I won't let them take you from me again."
The proposition was nerve-wracking if only for the possibility of being found, but something about his confidence and sincerity caused a flurry of cold to dance down her spine, and she found herself agreeing before any more worries could convince her otherwise. Of course she could stay. How would she be able to leave? Too much was said, too much was felt, to leave now.
They'd peeled themselves off the mess of the floor but Cassandra couldn't quite pull away completely, clinging to him in any way she could as though he might disappear at any moment. Though, Loki welcomed her presence at his side. The bed Frigga had provided to make Loki's stay more comfortable didn't look all that enticing but, once she was in it, Cassandra couldn't imagine sleeping anywhere else. It was hard not to be satisfied with anything and everything—her chest felt all too full to deny pleasures.
She snuggled into his side as Loki joined her, pulling the blanket over them both as he settled in, and her nose nuzzled into his neck to feel his pulse thumping against the skin as she slept. Rest was something they both needed. Loki was thoroughly exhausted but his anger and despair had kept him rather awake. Now, with everything he could ever need safely tucked into his arms, he could let his eyes close.