Without waiting for an invitation Odin swept into the room with such intent that Reagan found herself staggering out of his way slightly. He waved a hand somewhat dismissively as soon as he crossed the threshold and the door swung shut behind him with a loud 'bang!'
"Oh yes, please come in," Reagan muttered sarcastically and she was instantly met with the authoritative glare of Odin's one remaining eye.
"I would choose wisely, the tone you decided to address me with this evening," he warned.
And though the statement caused a chill to travel down Reagan's spine, she didn't back down.
Reagan, Loki cautioned, sensing her defiance. Please, tread lightly. Odin's wrath is not something I would have you face.
She could feel wild, nervous tension roiling off Loki, and that alone just made her all the angrier. He'd been just as surprised to find the Allfather waiting outside of her chambers, but where his presence had only annoyed Reagan - especially given what he had just interrupted - she could feel sheer dread arising within Loki. Not the rage or resentment she would have expected from him. No, his presence - here, alone with her - elicited dread from him.
She studied the ancient being before her, reminding herself of his unfathomable power. More powerful than Loki. More powerful than Thor. Supposedly all-knowing, wise and just. His very presence was intimidating - he seemed so much larger than anything in the room. He took up space. He was the focal point. King. Allfather. An image of strength and wisdom and perfection.
And yet, Reagan knew that he buried his problems, hid them away where they could be of no bother to him. For all of eternity, if he saw fit.
Reagan couldn't stop herself from thinking what a little man he was.
"Okay, fine," she answered Odin, malice still evident in her voice. "To what do I owe the pleasure, exactly?"
Odin eyed her dangerously. Her tone, evidently, had not shifted enough to have satisfied him.
She could only imagine what he saw when he looked at her - a defiant little mortal, with no right to so much as gaze upon the king of the Nine Realms, let alone speak back to him.
Words Loki spoke seemingly a million lifetimes ago came flooding back to her suddenly.
An ant has no quarrel with a boot.
Had they been words he'd heard before? Loki had always considered humans beneath him, Reagan had just thought that stemmed from Loki's inherent hatred for all things Midgardian. But now, knowing of what he'd been taught to think of Frost Giants... maybe it was his father who had drilled into him just how lowly mortals were.
"Reports have been reaching me, of late," Odin said, his voice unnervingly calm. "Unsavoury reports, of a mortal girl wreaking havoc throughout the Kingdom."
"Okay well, I think 'wreaking havoc' is overdoing it a little-"
"Reports of attacks upon soldiers - members of the Einherjar," Odin continued. "The burns they've suffered at your hands. One such soldier has also been delivered threats by a particular prisoner in Asgard's dungeons."
Reagan loosed a weary sigh.
"Unbelievable," she muttered.
So this was to be Loki's fault as well.
Odin rounded on her, her reaction angering him.
"Do you deny the attacks?"
"No, I don't," she said adamantly. "But don't you want to know why they happened?"
"Your reasoning doesn't interest me. An attack on the Einherjar is an attack on Asgard. And a threat against our peace. I will not hear of another incident."
"Wow. That really sums you up doesn't it?"
Reagan, I beg of you... do not provoke him.
Why not? You do.
That's different. You know it is. Loki insisted. Please, just back down.
Odin glowered at her.
"I excused one such incident," he said, in a low voice. "One could be reasoned as an accident - unruly magic belonging to a being for whom the power is too great-"
Reagan clenched her jaw.
"-but for another incident to occur earlier this very night, with a sea of on-lookers, against one of Asgard's most elite and respected warriors. It will not be stood for."
She scoffed.
"So, is it off to the dungeons for me then?"
"No," Odin said steadily. "No, I believe you've already spent more than your fair share of time down there."
Her eyes flicked to his.
"It was my express decree that the prisoner would not receive visitation from anyone."
Reagan felt the sting those words inspired in Loki.
"Least of all a mortal whose very presence in Asgard puts all our people at risk - allowing the bond forged by the mark to grow - puts our people at risk," Odin told her. "And yet, my guards have grown suspicious. They report that the prisoner holds illusions in place. Illusions that they could not once detect at all, but have now begun to grow lazy, perhaps due to his attention being focused elsewhere."
Reagan began to flush under the implication.
Something in Odin shifted as he studied her, and Reagan glared back at him defiantly.
"I sense new magic in you," he murmured, as if to himself more than her.
Without warning, Odin lifted a hand and power surged through her. Reagan almost screamed under the force of it. Odin had inspected her power once when she had first arrived in Asgard, and it had felt uncomfortable, and invasive, but this-
Reagan! Loki's voice sounded somewhere in the distance but she had no choice but to shut him out as she threw her mental shields up with all her might to try and stave off the King's invasion. It was nothing like Loki's presence - even at the beginning when she hadn't wanted him there, it hadn't felt like this. This did not belong. It was not theirs.
She felt the way Odin inspected her shields, poking them for holes, for weaknesses, before finally, his power retreated, leaving her to stand there, shakily catching her breath. It was all too clear that he could have shattered her shields with the lightest of touches.
"Do you deny it?" Odin asked then as if nothing had happened. "Your constant presence in my dungeons, even against my order."
She glared at him.
"Everyone says that these marks are ancient magic. Magic beyond even your capability. You couldn't get rid of them. You couldn't undo them," Reagan glared at the king, still trying to steady her breath. "Why shouldn't I visit him? What harm is there in that?"
"What harm is there? For him to have an informant wandering freely through my Kingdom after his attempt on my life? After the desolation, he caused on Jotenheim and Midgard? After his complete upheaval of peace throughout the Nine Realms?"
"Say his name," Reagan murmured, studying him. "You haven't once said his name this entire conversation."
"You dare to-"
"Yes, I dare," she shot back defiantly. "Say his name."
Odin glared at her, unspeaking. Reagan shook her head.
"Do you have any idea of the pain that he's in?" she asked. "Loki. Your son. Do you have any idea what you've put him through? How much self-loathing he's suffered because of you."
"How strange it is, to have you speak but to hear his voice."
"This isn't him speaking. I've seen what you've done to him. You always made him feel second best. Less worthy. God, that fucking word - worthy - to use it for just one of them. That's so messed up. And all the while you kept it secret from him - who he really was - and then when he demanded answers you went and fell asleep-"
"Insolent girl!"
"And then he comes back, and instead of giving him answers - or a fucking apology - you treat him like the monster he believes he is and you punish him for his pain."
"That is not a matter a mortal has any right to speak upon."
"You haven't even visited him," Reagan said, ignoring him. "Not once. And maybe the reason you can't face him is because you know that you failed him."
"Loki has never had to want for anything," Odin snapped.
"Yeah, except for you," Reagan said steadily.
The king turned to look at her.
"I've been inside his head," she told him, emotion stirring in her. "I saw him on the edge of that bridge before he fell. You know, Thor wasn't the only one who needed you that day. Loki needed you too."
Odin glowered at her. He looked dangerous. She could feel the power ebbing from him. She didn't care.
"But no. Loki had messed up so you let him fall. You just throw your children away when they let you down," Reagan spat at him as the fury rose in her. "You banished Thor. Loki's locked away for the rest of his days for something you drove him to. Any other kids we don't know about because they're hidden away in a cell somewhere?"
She'd struck a nerve.
Overstepped.
By a mile.
Odin roared as he rounded on her and this time when his magic struck her, it didn't feel invasive. Instead, she felt... alone. Strangely alone. More alone than she had in a long time. Her heart started to thunder in her chest as she realised what it was. It was because he was gone. Loki was gone.
She couldn't feel him.
She couldn't feel him.
She reached desperately for the bond, panic searing through every last nerve in her body.
Where was it?
Where was it?
LOKI?! she called desperately, blindly into the nothingness.
And slowly, some of the panic in her began to ease as she realised that the bond was not gone, but had just been shielded with a new, stronger layer of magic.
If she had thought Loki's icy walls had been impenetrable... they'd been nothing - nothing - compared to this.
"What did you do?!" Reagan all but screeched at the King.
And a new strange calm had quickly settled over him. Once again he was perfectly composed. Steady. There was finality to it. As though... as though he had won.
"The shields you've managed to develop would have been of little use," he told her in that frightfully calm voice. "I've merely gifted you with the means to protect yourself."
"Little use for what?"
"For your return to Midgard," Odin said resolutely.
Reagan froze.
A chill rushed over her as the air rushed from Reagan's lungs.
No, no, no, no, no...
"I don't understand."
"It's what you wanted, is it not?" The King asked. "To return home. It could not be done before, with the bond between you exposed. Our enemy would have sensed it. But now with the foundations you've managed to build, which have now been reinforced, it should no longer be possible that they would detect you. So long as you hold the barrier in place, the Atraxis will not come for you. And so, I see no reason for you not to return home."
Reagan's stomach clenched painfully. She inspected this new foreign blockage that muted the bond to the point of non-existence. Compared to the shield she could now hold in place... she might as well have been holding a piece of paper up over her head.
"But I-"
"Your sanctuary in Asgard was conditional upon your compliance to our laws and our ways. Those conditions have been violated repeatedly. By your attacks upon my men. Your trespassing within our dungeons. Your open disrespect towards the crown." Odin told her steadily. "Your welcome in Asgard has drawn to a conclusion."
Tears prickled behind Reagan's eyes.
"But, what about Loki?" she whispered.
For the first time, Odin hesitated, no longer looking at her.
"You may think me a monster who holds no love for his child, but that couldn't be further from the truth," he told her in a sombre tone. "It was always my intention to keep you away from him, from the moment I learned of the mark."
"Why?"
"You are mortal," Odin said simply. "All too soon you will be not dust. A memory. Should he be forced to endure you withering, growing weak, your mind decaying? Better to shield him from the pain of it all than to allow him to endure you rotting from afar."
Those words stung her more than she ever could have thought possible. She hadn't allowed herself to dwell upon how impossible it all was. How impossible they were. She'd resisted, so persistently for so long. Denied it. Until she wasn't. Until she was falling. She didn't give herself time to think about...
Tears welled in Reagan's eyes as she watched the Allfather linger in the doorway.
"He will thank me for it," Odin murmured, more to himself than to Reagan. "In time, he will see this for the kindness that it is."
Odin looked her way one final time before he exited her chambers.
"I will send my guards for you at dawn. They will escort you to the Bifrost."
Reagan didn't return to Loki's cell as she'd promised she would. She couldn't bare to face him. She couldn't look him in the eye while she told him of the damage she'd done. She'd promised him... she'd promised him that he wouldn't have to shoulder his burden alone anymore. And that very same night she'd ruined everything beyond repair.
It wasn't long before she managed to lower the newly forged shields.
Reagan? Loki's voice entered her mind the second he was able to, there was something desperate in it. Are you alright?
As she sat at the end of her bed, playing with the tulle of a dress far too beautiful, fighting back tears and willing away the sunrise, she didn't know how to answer that question.
"I'm okay," she assured him in a watery voice, wanting to ease the panic she felt in him.
God, she hoped he wouldn't hate her.
What happened? he asked. The bond, it was as if for a moment- I thought he'd...
"I'm sorry," Reagan whispered.
She felt Loki hesitate. He brushed against the bond, uncertain.
Sorry for what?
Reagan's chin quivered as she let him in, showing him what had just come to pass between her and the Allfather. How badly she'd lost her temper. How monumentally she'd misstepped. Loki inspected the memory for a long while, turning it this way and that, weighing every word that was spoken. When he last spoke again, there was a cold acceptance in his voice that Reagan cringed away from.
I see.
It was all he said on the matter.
She felt him withdrawing from her, his essence ebbing away from the bond.
"Please don't go," she whispered.
And Loki stilled, caught in the battle between what they both wanted and what was easier.
And they both lingered in it. With the link open the bitterness was twofold. So was the regret and the anger and the loneliness. But at least this way, they were together in it.
And she had asked him to stay. So, of course, that is what he did.
Silence fell heavily over them for a long while. In the hours that passed, they both found themselves laying on their own respective beds staring up at two different ceilings, with what might as well have been lightyears of distance between them. They hadn't spoken much, but neither seemed quite ready to seal themselves off from the other.
"Just because I'm leaving doesn't mean we need to cut ties," Reagan murmured at last, even in little more than a whisper her voice sounded too loud for her empty chambers.
That was always the plan, Loki replied, and where she'd expected malice from him, she found comfort. It made her heart ache.
"But things are different now," she said, despising the hope in her voice. "Aren't they?"
Yes, they are. Loki agreed gently. You're going home. You can't spend your life talking, in your head, to some madman in a prison cell a million lightyears away.
Reagan couldn't help but smile a little, even as tears began to well in her eyes. She rolled onto her side to cuddle deeper into her pillow, trying to find some form of comfort in it.
"But what if I want to?" she whispered.
I won't let you. It's not safe. I won't risk the Atraxis detecting you. Not even for... There's no future for us, Reagan. You know it as well as I do.
Reagan closed her eyes, a horrible, empty ache swelling in her chest. And she knew it was hers but it was his too. Everything laid bare like that on the table. Too late. Far too late.
"What about your plan to escape?" she asked.
I never had any intention of escaping. Odin reinforced the spell work on this cell himself. There's no way out. I'll be in here until his dying day. And likely beyond it.
"But then why did you agree to help me learn how to put up the shields?"
His voice was so impossibly soft when he answered her.
Because you asked me to.
Reagan felt as if her ribcage was cracking open, exposing her insides to be torn apart by the elements.
"This isn't fair," she breathed.
No... No, it's not.
And it wasn't. How long had she wanted to go home? How long had she been trying to, only to be told it wasn't an option? And now, just as she was realising it was the last thing she wanted... Reagan wondered exactly when it had happened, that she'd stopped longing for a place and instead started feeling homesick for a person.
"Loki, I'm sorry," she murmured.
I told you not to apologise, he said, not unkindly. And for what it's worth, I've never had anyone stand in my corner the way you did tonight. I'll always be grateful for you, Reagan.
Okay, what if once every year, we both bring down our shields and we talk to each other, just for a little while?
The eve was growing late, the faintest hint of a sunrise beginning to glow on the horizon. Loki closed his eyes and willed away the ache in his chest - the weakness in him. There was something hopeful in her voice, it sounded the way it always did when she wanted to make a game of something.
Borrowed time, he reminded himself.
"Come now, I don't have time for that," Loki chided.
He couldn't risk the temptation. Couldn't risk himself allowing the link to open up again because he knew if he did, there'd be no closing it. She'd be at risk. The Atraxis would sense her and she'd be alone, exposed and defenceless. He couldn't do that to her.
But then, just because Loki was so very, very weak he considered the end of her lifespan. How frightfully close it was compared to his own. And he allowed himself to indulge.
"Once every fifty years," he conceded, leaving all emotion out of the words.
One last time. One last time to speak to her before she was gone. To know that she'd been okay - and of course, she would be okay without him - but to rest easy in the knowledge that she had lived and lived happily before she was taken from the universe. How much living she would manage in those fifty years, all while he remained in that cell. She'd go on and change and shift, grow and age, and in time she'd forget him, she'd find peace. And every day he'd think of her. A lifetime for her. A heartbeat for him. And then she'd be gone.
Fifty years... she repeated softly.
He knew she wanted to argue, but she didn't. She knew she wouldn't win. He would not relent. He needed her safe. And he wanted her to let go, to move on.
I'll be old. Her voice sounded gently in his mind. My skin will be all wrinkled and I'll have arthritis in my hands.
Loki closed his eyes and nodded, trying to accept the cruelty of fate that she would so quickly wither away.
"You'll have lived a full life," he told her, the words tasting a little bitter on his tongue, though he hid that from her as best he could. "You'll have found a good man to fall in love with - one who gives you a life you deserve. And you'll have children, each older than you are right now."
And you'll still look exactly the same, he could feel the way she smiled sadly at the thought of it. So you'll make fun of me for my grey hair.
"Even though I'll secretly still think that you're beautiful."
And you'll be happy, Reagan said, her voice full of emotion as she allowed herself to indulge in the impossible little fantasy. Because you'll have found somewhere that you feel like you really belong. And that will make me so happy...
And Loki didn't tell her that it couldn't be done, because he'd realised that very evening that he'd finally found exactly that, but for her sake, he was going to let her go.
And we'll laugh about the dicks I drew all over your bed, Reagan added quickly.
"We'll never laugh about that," Loki retorted, even as his lips curled up against his will.
They lingered in their heavy silence, each overwhelmed with sorrow and regret and... missingness. How strange it was to mourn not only a thing you hadn't lost yet, but a thing you never truly had.
Loki... Reagan said, breathlessly. I wish...
"I know," he hushed her gently, sending all the gentle comfort he could muster down the link. "So do I."
He could feel that she was at her breaking point and while exhaustion threatened to take her, she fought against it with all her might. It was only adding to her distress. Loki clenched his jaw, steeling himself.
"It's not long until sunrise," he said. "You should sleep."
No, I don't want to. I don't want to leave you.
He could hardly stand it anymore.
"Get some rest, mortal," Loki murmured. "You'll need it for tomorrow."
Wait. Loki, please-
Loki lifted his shields, biting down on the bitterness which filled him as he found himself alone in his mind once more. As he would soon, once again, always be. The realisation struck him like lightning, making it hard to breathe. And all-consuming rage - rage that he'd almost forgotten he was capable of - filled him. Rage at Odin and the way he had dictated the course of Loki's life, kept him in the shadows about the truth. Rage at the universe, for dangling her before him, just for him to know that he could never have her. Rage that Odin was right. That regardless of everything else, she would live a mortal lifespan. But even that - a few short years with her - he would be denied it.
Odin would deny him.
The way the bond had sealed shut under his magic like it had been filled with cement. Block, muted, impermeable. It had been so resolutely invaded. So un-her, that for a moment - a fleeting, unbearable few seconds - Loki had thought perhaps Odin had killed her. And all the while Loki was locked away beneath the city, helpless - useless. And now Odin was sending her away, and Loki was just as helpless. Just as useless.
He was going to lose her.
And there was nothing he could do.
Rage coursed red-hot through his very veins. Poisonous. Toxic. And painfully familiar.
As soon as Loki raised shields firmly - stubbornly - in place, Reagan had finally allowed herself to cry. She sobbed, slightly relieved to finally be able to allow the heartbreak to flow through her, no longer having to shield Loki from it, and yet all the while willing him to come back.
Panic gripped her that maybe this was it. Maybe it was done.
What if he just never allowed her in again? What if, when the morning came, and Odin's guards were sent for her to march her down the Bifrost, he kept his shields in place and she never heard from him again?
The very thought of it sent ice through her veins.
No, she determined. Loki wouldn't do that. Not to her. No matter what else, he would say goodbye to her. He would let her say goodbye.
Goodbye...
How impossible a concept it seemed.
For so long, she'd wanted to be rid of him. To even think it now inspired such self-loathing.
If only she hadn't fought it - hadn't been so impossibly stubborn. If she had just listened to what she was told early on. Frigga. Sygran. The mark was never wrong. Trust it.
Trust it.
Trust it.
If she had just done that, given them more time, made peace earlier, then perhaps...
Reagan's mind wandered back to that first morning in the clearing. Just after Loki had helped her escape Halvor and had told her of the most beautiful place in Asgard. It was where she had first felt comfortable with his presence in her mind. Where they had poked harmless fun at each other and made each other laugh.
The most beautiful place in all of Asgard.
She wanted to see it one last time.
Reagan pulled herself from her bed and shed the gown she'd worn to the ball. Earlier that evening she'd thought it was so impossibly beautiful. Now it seemed a dull, lifeless thing in a heap on the floor. She wondered vaguely if the clearing might look the same. She wondered if all things would.
For fear of an unwanted confrontation with Halvor or Fandral or any other unexpected interactions, she donned her super-suit that morning.
Don't call it that, Loki would have said if he'd still be present in her mind. The very thought of it made her eyes prickle with tears.
She threw a dark cloak over herself, raising the hood over her head to shield her face. Though it was still early in the morning, and the palace halls would likely still be deserted, she didn't want to take the risk of being seen. She had no doubt that word had spread like wildfire about what had happened at the ball, and if anyone had seen Odin coming or going from her chambers, the rumours would be even worse. She wanted to avoid their gazes.
As Reagan made her way out of the castle and followed a path to a clearing that Loki had revealed to her so very long ago, she was not aware that rumours of a mortal girl had, in fact, been spreading far and wide throughout the city.
But these were not the rumours she had anticipated.
These were not rumours of her.
Instead, the Asgardians whispered of Thor's absence from the ball of the Convergence. They gossiped of how the Prince was last spotted in Medina earlier in the evening, celebrating the success of the battle against the marauders on Vanaheim. Some whispered of how he had declined a drink with the good Lady Sif and had disappeared for the rest of the night. Those who knew his patterns reported that instead of making an appearance at the ball as was expected of him, he made his nightly trip along the Bifrost to pay a visit to Heimdall. The rumour was that when he journeyed there he always asked the same thing - for news of the mortal woman he'd met when he was banished to Midgard. That he watched over her. Every single evening.
However, this evening was different. And the reason the rumours ran so rampant, was because upon this eve Thor had gone to retrieve her. And so, Jane Foster had arrived in Asgard and was in possession of the Aether.