Chapter Text
Loki might as well have been a suspect in a criminal case, instead of a victim who had just survived an assassination attempt, given the way he was being treated. At Odin's orders, the mages and guards who escorted Loki to his suite had torn through his rooms as soon as they'd locked him in. They even found the safe under the windowsill, broke it open with sledgehammers, and strew his treasures all over the floor.
They at least had the decency to wear sheepish expressions as they ransacked his space. In fact, they twitched in fear whenever Loki glared at them, and clearly hoped the All-Father would protect them from Loki's future retaliation.
A few hours later, as though all that weren't bad enough, Odin and Frigga, who must have finally finished calming things down with the court, showed up to yell at him. Well, Odin was doing the yelling, and once he started, he kept going. His lacerating lecture had already lasted for what felt like a lifetime.
Loki couldn't remember the last time both of his parents had been in his rooms. Certainly not since he'd been small and eternally sickly. Even then, his mother had sat most of the bedside vigils. Odin, today, looked all wrong in here, out of place: short and old and red-faced with rage.
"Did you mean to spite me? Is that why you did it?" Odin's voice rose pitch by desperate pitch until it had lost its regal timbre and become almost a whine.
Loki hoped the guards who now lined the corridor just outside his suite could hear. He hoped they would gossip about it, about the All-Father's whiny broken-throatedness.
Loki had learned self-containment from the best. He'd learned it from Odin himself. And his righteous indignation matched his father's in this moment. He poured all of his frustrated hopes and worries into battling every single barb and accusation Odin hurled at him.
"You embarrass your mother and me in front of the entire intergalactic consortium. You put Asgard at risk with an important ally. You sneak this… this human into my court," Odin continued when Loki responded with nothing but a sneer.
"You lie and you scheme, and then when you are found out, you tell me of your so-called feelings. And this coming on the heels of the episode in Nornheim. This is not love, Loki. This is self-indulgent rebellion. I will not have it."
"You will have it no longer, since you have left him to die," Loki retorted, just refraining from screaming. He refused to go hoarse before Odin did, and was therefore saving up his screams. Honestly, he had no time for this. Not while Bucky was somewhere in the depths of the palace, bleeding out. But they would not let Loki leave his rooms, would not let him breathe. If only he had spent more time on teleportation magic, he would have been able to get out of here and go to Bucky's side.
"Losing this latest indiscretion won't stop you from dredging up some other new inconvenience," Odin replied. "It seems to be a habit with you. What's next? A farm animal?"
"If that is where my heart led, then, yes, I would love a goat," Loki retorted.
"Odin, please," Frigga tried to interject. She'd been trying to interject for some time now, but nothing so far had successfully calmed Odin.
Loki was a moment away from unleashing that strange ice fury magic that sometimes seeped out of him in moments of stress. Even his mother was engendering disgust, for here was a powerful witch queen, piteously wringing her hands instead of standing up to Odin's unfairness.
"Stop coddling him," Odin snapped back. "It is this very coddling that has led to such behavior in the first place. Secret trips and secret magic. A criminal in my house. For how long has this been going on?"
"Do you honestly want to know?"
"Answer the question, Loki," Frigga pleaded. "Do not make this worse."
Loki didn't see how things could get any worse, but his imagination was not currently operating at peak levels, so he believed her.
"Do you remember the time I ran away from home?" he said.
"There were so many times," Odin said. "Any individual instance has been lost in the sea of your spoiled melodrama."
"The time we found you huddled on that little island far out in the bay?" Frigga asked. She, at least, remembered it well enough. "You were very young."
Loki nodded. "In the Haunted Hills. Which I discovered are not, in fact, haunted."
"No, but we have allowed the rumour to persist, as it keeps people away better than any edict ever could," Frigga said. "It is a strange, unpredictable, dangerous place."
"So I learned. There is magic there. Powerful magic. I never did learn where it comes from, and did not dare ask."
"Its magic dates back to the dawn of Asgard, when the Bifrost was created, but the power there is wilder, more willful than the Bifrost. The magic of truth and travel. I begin to imagine how this might have happened," she continued. "The magic there allowed you to cross realms somehow, to Midgard, to another time. And you made a friend there?"
"Yes." Loki had refused to answer any of Odin's previous questions, but a weak part of him still heeded his mother's queries. Perhaps because she did not yell, did not scold, did not seem liable to rupture a blood vessel. Perhaps because she actually seemed interested. Perhaps because he'd decided that engaging in conversation might help take his mind off his worries. Enough of his secrets were out that not much more damage could be done. "The cave sent me to Midgard, to what I now know to be the future. I needed a friend, and the cave provided. I wanted to keep this friend. So, I… I spelled a way for us to continue to see one another. A kind of tethering. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. Even now that I do know what I'm doing, I have never been able to replicate the spells. I always knew I was traveling to another realm, but it was centuries before I understood about the time difference, or to which realm I was traveling, or even that he was human. He grew along with me, you see, ever the same age, despite the difference in our years."
"You tethered yourself to something that existed not only in the future, but also something fleetingly impermanent," Frigga explained. "Therefore, time warped and stretched around the two of you so that you could continue to enjoy one another."
It sounded romantic in her phrasing. It was romantic. Exactly the kind of romance that ended in tragedy.
"Tethering magic requires physical anchors on both sides," Odin said. "Where are yours?"
Loki looked around his ransacked room, purposefully not letting his eyes fall on any one object, even though he knew that the marble had rolled rather close to Odin's feet.
"Do you really expect me to tell you? And anyway, it doesn't matter. My usual means only allowed me to go to Midgard, not the other way around, and I doubt you have any interest in visiting there. I used something new, an entirely different magic to bring him here. It was a gift from the Norns, in fact. By giving me the tools to bring him here, you could say that the Norns themselves sanctioned his visit," Loki said proudly, knowing that the Norns were the only beings who could trump Odin's authority, and possibly make him reconsider his position on Bucky's undesirability in the palace.
It didn't work. Loki immediately understood why.
"What gift is this? How did you come by it?" An acquisitive gleam flashed in Odin's one good eye, and he began to rub Gugenir's jeweled head with his thumb. Like a dragon, he had a weakness for treasures—for magical artifacts in particular. The rarer and more powerful the better. Everyone knew there was nowhere he liked better than his treasure room. He often went there to think, or, more likely, Loki had always thought, to smugly gloat.
"I visited them on my way to Nornheim, before my imprisonment with Karnilla and Amora. I asked for a tool that would allow me to bring someone through space and time. They granted me such a tool. But beyond that, I do not think you have any right to know. It was my gift, a reward for the trouble I took to meet them. You have no claim to it."
"I have the claim of your father and king of Asgard!" Odin had gone red in the face again, and Loki knew that his barbs had stung.
"A father who doesn't send an army to rescue his kidnapped son. A father who himself locks up his son for befriending harmless peasants. A father who punishes the savior of his son's life. Yes, that sounds like a father with a lot of claims. A wise and magnanimous king, indeed."
"Loki…" Frigga warned.
But this time Odin did not take the bait. Instead, he changed the subject of his interrogation. "Vifill mentioned the Lifeline Formula. What did he mean by it?"
Loki thought about lying, but there was no use. The truth was already out. And he was at the end of his patience. He was tired, Bucky was dying, he didn't care. So, he confessed, "I made it for… for him." Loki refused to name him. Odin didn't deserve Bucky's name, didn't deserve to have ever met him.
"How?"
"In the usual way that potions are made," Loki snapped. "By collecting the ingredients and spelling them together."
"And he took it?"
"He took half of it."
"What happened to the other half?"
"He gave it to another mortal. A friend of his," he said with a consciously maddening shrug, at this point mainly for the perverse pleasure of seeing Odin explode.
He was rewarded by a whizz-bang detonation.
"A friend?! The treasures I have kept safe for thousands of years, handed out like worthless trinkets to arbitrary mortals."
"Technically, all you have is a list of ingredients. I am the one who poured blood, sweat, and time into collecting the ingredients and researching the best way to combine them. The potion was mine to hand out, not yours."
"Ungrateful, insolent, selfish, short-sighted boy. I cannot even look at you for another minute, much less converse with you. We will resume this later."
Odin looked around him and furrowed his brow. He twirled Gugenir around so that the shiny round head of the staff pointed at the floor. He began hovering the staff around him, scanning. Loki held his breath, but it was too late. The jewel at the head of the staff passed over the marble and glowed.
Odin bent down to pick it up. Loki couldn't fully repress his flinch.
"Ah-ha," Odin said quietly. He held it in front of his good eye and tried to peer through it.
"There's no point in you pocketing it," Loki said. "It won't work for you. It is tied to me."
"I have no intention of keeping it." Odin tossed the marble into the air, and blasted it with a powerful bolt of energy from Gugenir. The little marble exploded into a thousand shards, along with what remained of Loki's heart.
Things felt final, now, over in a way they hadn't until this moment. All the fight evaporated out of him.
Loki was still gaping at the spot where the marble had last been whole when Odin swept out, robes rippling behind him as though they, too, by extension, quivered with anger. With Odin departed much of the tension in the room. Loki now gave into the helpless desolation he'd been trying to keep at bay. He fell onto the bed, curling in on himself. He covered his face with his hand as soon as he felt tears of frustration leak from the corner of his eyes.
He felt Frigga come sit beside him. She gripped his wrist and gently pulled the hand away.
"Amora might as well have succeeded," Loki whispered, not looking at her. "I wish she had."
"Don't say that," Frigga said calmly. "You don't mean it."
"Perhaps I do."
"In the hall you called him… your friend… you called him 'Bucky'," she said curiously. "Is that his real name?"
"Yes. No. His name is actually James Barnes, but he has always preferred to be called Bucky."
"In Jotunheim, when you were ill, when you had your growth spurt, when I was taking care of you… you pleaded for someone in your delirium. Was that him? Bucky? I thought the name sounded familiar."
"That was him. I did not entirely lie when I told you about him. The only falsehood was in letting you believe he wasn't real."
"Then I am glad for the chance to have met him, disastrous as today's circumstances were. He solaced the loneliness that I know you felt as a child, and for that, I thank him, even though I don't know him."
"And yet, he suffers because of me. He is wounded and imprisoned because of me. Can you do nothing to help us?"
"Not in the state your father is in. You went about this in the way most perfectly calibrated to provoke him."
"Is there another way that would have guaranteed a better reaction? Acceptance or welcome?"
"Likely not. Not with such a choice, and coming on the heels of your other disaster. I'm sorry, darling." She kissed the top of his head. "For what it's worth, I found him charming. Handsome, too. And he must have been quite clever, to have assimilated as easily as he did into our court."
"You speak of him as though he is already dead." A horrible thought gripped Loki as he remembered Frigga's unique talents. "Is he already dead? Have your arts already told you…"
She shook her head. "I know nothing more than what you witnessed with your own eyes."
"So, he might be."
"I hope he is not. But either way… I know things have not gone as you hoped. But hearts do heal. Even from this."
"You mean to imply that even if he is not dead, it can never be for us. But I tell you now, there will be no healing, no 'moving on' from this."
"You are too young to say such things."
But Loki knew in his bones that it was true.
"Even if you cannot convince Father to acknowledge him, or free him, can you at least to get a healer to the cells to see him? At least to…"
"Yes, that I can do. I stayed this extra minute only to ensure that you will be well. That you will not do anything drastic, nor harm yourself."
"I cannot be well while he suffers. But if it hastens you to his aid, I will promise to sit here quietly."
"Then I will go and bring you news in the morning." She moved to the door, but hesitated as noise from the corridor grew louder and louder. Shouts and protests and what sounded like bodies hitting the wall.
Seconds later, the door swung open. A frightened-looking guard scurried out of the way, and Thor thumped in.
"Mother?" He seemed a bit surprised to see Frigga there, but in the kind of mood he was in, he barely had attention to spare for her. He ran to Loki's side and engulfed him in a hug.
"Are you all right, brother?"
"Not particularly," Loki choked back with what little airflow Thor's tight embrace allowed. "Where have you been?"
"In the dungeons. I could not take Lord Barneson—I mean, Bucky—to the healers, so I went to the healers and made them go to him."
Thor had released Loki, but Loki was the one now who clung. "Thank you, brother. And how does he fare?"
"The wound was deep, but thankfully clean. It will be a few days before he regains full movement in his arm, but they assured me that he will make a full recovery. Thanks, in large part, to that potion you gave him. He is more resilient than any mortal has right to be. Because of it, he is already sitting up in his cell, quite lucid. He drank all of the water I fed him."
"That is, indeed, good news," Frigga said, as Loki took what felt like his first deep breath in hours.
"His first thoughts were all for you, brother, and for your welfare. After I assured him of that, his mind turned to other topics—surprisingly not related to his own plight. He succumbed to a green warrior's guilt. He has never killed before. Amora was his first, and although he would kill again to save you, he said, he… Well, you know it is. It takes time to work through one's first kill. I did not go down there expecting to give that talk, not today, not to him."
Loki shook his head at the ridiculousness of it all. "While you were giving Bucky the first-kill reassurance talk, Father's been up here, ranting that he's a cold-hearted assassin."
"Hardly," Thor scoffed. He turned to Frigga. "Mother, do you know what is in Father's mind as regards Bucky? I would see him freed and able to be with Loki. He is a good man."
Frigga shook her head. "Your father will never agree to that. In his mind, I think, it would have been cleaner for Bucky to have died of his injuries. But now that he has been healed…" She looked stymied, although still desirous to be helpful. "There is no easy way out of this."
"But why?" Thor asked. "I understand that he lied, and Father is angry about that, but…" He shrugged. "What does it matter? So what if Loki has a human lover? It isn't as though they can procreate, and Father has already said that Loki will not be king. There is no question of succession or awkward branches of the family tree. And given their lifespans it wouldn't even last very long. Therefore, why cannot Loki love whom he pleases?"
A flash of awkwardness passed across Frigga's face, so quickly that Thor didn't notice, and even though Loki did, sort of, he lacked the energy to fully care. Carefully, she said, without answering the question, "A brief, anonymous dalliance with a human is one thing, but after tonight…" She sighed. "At most, I might be able to convince your father to open the Bifrost and send Bucky home, but probably only under the stipulation that Loki be confined to the palace for the duration of Bucky's life, as confirmed by Heimdall. No more visits."
Loki shook his head, partly at the general horror of the idea of sitting in his room for decades, waiting for news of Bucky's death, and partly at the unworkable logistics of the thing. Until now, he'd been too worried about Bucky's current well-being to worry much about his future. But now that Thor had confirmed Bucky would recover, Loki knew, even though his soul longed to fight the facts, that there was only one thing to do. And that was to give Bucky up, for his own good.
All of Loki's efforts over the years had been for naught. Bucky would grow old and die—or die young in his stupid war—before Loki had aged at all. Loki would be left in a lonely life that suddenly seemed insupportably long and painfully empty.
"Sending him home through the Bifrost would have worked had I merely traveled through space to see him. But with the time element, it is impossible. We are too early. We would be sending him back years before he left. There would be two of him, separated in age by about ten years. He'd be unable to return to his life. He'd be alone and without resources. It would be a nightmare, not a reprieve. No, if I cannot keep him, then the only path is to send him back the way he came."
"And what way is that?" Frigga asked.
Loki explained, in more detail than he had when Odin had been in the room, about the knife maintaining the doorway between Bucky's bedroom and the cave. How the way was still in play, waiting to take Bucky home.
"I have heard of this realm-connecting knife before," Frigga said. "So has your father. We both thought it merely a myth. However, now that it is unquestionably real, and within reach, your father will bend to obtain it. If I can convince him that the only way to possess it is to complete the circuit and send Bucky home—which seems to be the truth—"
Loki alone knew that the Norns had promised him the knife only for the duration of a roundtrip. However, enough of the desperate eagerness in his face was real enough to convince Frigga of his veracity.
"I think I can convince him," she continued, reassured. "But in the meanwhile, Loki, you cannot continue to provoke him. Be quiet, contrite, and repentant. Nothing like your mood earlier. And you, Thor. Do not prod. Do not pester him about it. In fact, keep your distance, just in case."
"I don't pester!"
Loki and Frigga both shot him a disbelieving look.
"You two make the same exact expressions, did you know that?" Thor grumbled.
Frigga kissed first Thor, then Loki, on their cheeks. "I love you both," she said before leaving.
As soon as they were alone, Thor lumbered across the room, sat on the bed, and enveloped Loki in an almost-painful hug. But Loki welcomed the pain.
"Thank you, brother," Loki said, "in case I didn't say it before. For getting the healers."
"There is nothing to thank me for. You asked for my help, back in the banquet hall. I saw in your face how much he meant to you, so, even if I did not fully understand, how could I not comply? My interference was also selfish, in a way. I wanted to talk to him, alone, and that could not happen unless he was healed. I wanted to talk to him as himself."
"And how did you find him?" Loki asked, curious.
"The same as I did before. Whatever role he played, it was a light one. He was too weak for any playacting, but I discerned little difference in his manner or personality. He apologized for the deception, explaining that it was at your, quite understandable, insistence. Even were I not grateful to him for saving your life, it would still be impossible to harbour any ill will towards him for the lies he has told. In my mind, he remains just as I thought this morning: an amiable man whose only weakness is loving my brother too much. A weakness that I myself share."
"This morning?"
Thor was smug when he said, "You think me an idiot, but I am more observant than you give me credit for. You did not 'meet' him in the hallway before breakfast this morning. I recognized the clothes he wore as yours. I recognized the afterglow brightening both of your features, and the way he jumped at any excuse to drag you into his conversations. I told you yesterday morning that I suspected him of being infatuated with you. I've never been asked about you, so casually yet so often, in all my life. 'What did you and Loki do here?' and 'Was Loki with you during that tale?' It was his open interest in you that originally endeared him to me. You were the only one doing any real dissembling. I confess that I was angry with you this morning when you came into breakfast with the fellow. I thought you were toying with poor, sweet Lord Barneson—Bucky—merely to score against Fandral and Sif. I thought it mean of you. Petty and unfeeling. But now…"
"That does sound like something I would do," Loki confessed. "But no. Quite the opposite of 'unfeeling'."
"So many little things over the years now make sense. All those times you disappeared for an afternoon and came back exhausted and exhilarated. All those times on Midgard when you knew more about the geography than you had any right to. All those times recently when we went to the taverns and you acted like a monk, uninterested in all admirers. I wish you had told me what was going on. I wish you had told me what he truly meant to you. I wish you had included me in this long adventure." Thor's usually happy face lengthened with disappointment and hurt.
"I did try once, at the very beginning. I tried, but the way was shut. That time I rowed us to the Haunted Hills, promising to show you—"
"To show me a new friend. Yes, I remember. So, it was not a prank, after all. You did try to tell me." Thor relaxed slightly, as though he truly had been bothered, either by the old prank, or by Loki's lifelong secrecy, or both.
"It was not a prank. I was in earnest that day. I would have made it work for you if I could. But I had not yet learned how the magic worked… And then, by the time I understood, I had decided that I wanted him and his world all to myself."
"He was not feeling quite so well as to tell me everything I wanted to know, but from what I did get out of him, it sounds like you two have had many charming adventures. There was something about an underground caravan of carriages, and another about races on some sort of two-wheeled personal chariot. That one made little sense, but sounded delightful." Thor sounded wistful, as though his own adventures—the kind people wrote songs about—were less interesting in comparison to Loki's quotidian Brooklyn ones.
"It doesn't matter anymore. It's over."
"Since when does my clever brother give up so easily? Since when do you not have some scheme? I stayed behind in order to hear it, and to see how I can help."
"Since I saw him bleeding out and dying a few hours ago," Loki replied. "I cannot risk anything more. He has been hurt enough by me. By knowing me." Loki's masochistic memory replayed every hardship Bucky had faced as a result of their friendship in a punishing strip: the hypochondria back in Italy that Loki had not witnessed but could easily imagine as a result of Loki failing to return that first time; Bucky's eternally tired eyes back when he'd been secretly working three after-school jobs to pay for Loki's steak lunches at Peter Luger's; a switchblade held at Bucky's throat by assailants in a Manhattan back alley; Amora's knife glittering in Bucky's shoulder just now. "His life would have been easier had I never happened upon him. More 'normal'," he said, remembering Bucky's conflicted quest for normalcy during their long separation. "His life would have been better."
Thor shook his head. "That is not true."
"What do you know about it?"
"My life would not be better without you. Even if you are, at times—most of the time, really—a pest. I could see in his face that the same was true for him."
Loki punched Thor, hard, in the shoulder, as retaliation for such soppy sentiment. He knew it wouldn't hurt. Thor, in retaliation, clutched him tight.
"I'm sorry this happened, brother," Thor whispered into Loki's hair, with feeling. "But I am also glad you are alive."
Loki didn't quite have it in him to agree. But neither did he shrug off the comforting embrace.
Either Frigga's powers of persuasiveness were even more impressive than her sons had already known, or Odin coveted the knife with even more fervor than he usually did, because it took her only a day to sort everything out. Thor had not been allowed back in the dungeons, so there was no more news about Bucky. Loki spent a miserable day and another night in his guarded room, feeling too numb to do anything but sit in the window seat and stare out. Around mid-morning, the shock wore off, and he belatedly succumbed to all the terror and trauma from his near-death experience that he'd temporarily pushed aside to worry about Bucky.
He wasn't sleeping when the guards entered his room in the middle of the night and told him to follow them down to the private royal pier.
"What for?" he asked.
"We're sailing to the Haunted Hills," the guard said, shivering slightly, and obviously unenthused about this latest assignment. It was clear that he retained a healthy fear of the ghost stories every Asgardian had been told about the place. "You're needed to perform a spell."
Even though he thrilled to learn that his mother had come through for him, Loki was feeling low and vituperative. "I'll summon all the ghosts," he said meanly, "just for you lot."
The fog swirled thick, and the nightly winds coming from the mountains were gusting strong enough to push a boat right off the edge of the world if the sailor weren't careful. Loki could just about make out the other two boats in the group, but it was too dark to tell which one Bucky was on. It was only when he picked out Thor—huge, barrel-gaited, not wearing an Einherjar helmet—attempting to board a boat, only to be barked at by Odin, that he deduced where Bucky stood.
"You are not needed on this expedition, Thor," Odin said.
"I will not be left behind," Thor retorted.
"Fine. If you must. But you'll sail on that one, with your brother," Odin ordered, with a tone that said he had little patience for Thor's stubbornness on top of everything else.
"Loki? You there?" Bucky shouted. He must have heard Odin speaking to Thor, and understood that Loki was near.
All the blood in Loki's veins pumped a little harder at the sound of Bucky's frustrated, frightened, familiar voice.
"I'm here!" he shouted back. "Are you all right?"
"I've been better. You?"
"Ditto," Loki said, hoping to make Bucky smile with the American idiom, even if he himself couldn't see the smile.
"All these soldiers, for one harmless little human," Thor grumbled as he took his place by Loki's side in the boat.
"They are here for your brother, not for him," Frigga corrected. "In case of any dramatics or surprises. Of which I trust there will be none, Loki."
"Have you any planned, brother? Surprises?" Thor whispered into Loki's ear and out of Frigga's hearing, as the boat pulled out of and away from the dock.
"It depends on whether the All-Father keeps his word," Loki whispered back, but it was a lie. He had nothing. "I refuse to put him in any more danger. But I will keep my eye out for opportunities."
"In this mist, I doubt you'll be able to see anything at all. I certainly can't. But I will do my part and keep a look-out as well."
"Thank you, Thor. For everything. I know you've tried as best you can."
"I'm only sorry I could not do more."
Light had just begun to creep over the top of the palace spires, far in the distance now, when they reached the little island. It felt wrong to be here with other people. The captains, not knowing on which side of the island the particular cave was located, looked to Loki for directions on where to moor. He guided them in a hoarse voice, eyes focused on where Bucky's figure was slowly coming into view as the light increased. Bucky was staring just as hungrily and sadly back. His hands were bound in front of him instead of behind, likely in consideration of his wound. Someone must have continued to replace the bandage around his shoulder and across his torso, for he could see it peeking clean and white from under a plain new tunic. Bucky wore the same brown leggings and black boots as he had the other day; the healers and jailers must not have bothered to replace the garments that had been spared his bleeding. His face was drawn and he slumped with the same kind of defeated depression that Loki felt.
Loki hopped out of his boat and headed over to where he could see Bucky crouched near the bow of his. However, the guards barred his way before he could get there. Loki bared his teeth at them, and was about to summon the most horrible hex he could think of when he heard Thor say, "Move out of my way."
It seemed as though Odin and the guards were less concerned with Thor running off with Bucky, because they grudgingly made way for him even as they continued to block Loki. Loki watched as Thor supported Bucky and led him out of the boat. As soon as he was standing relatively straight (although using Thor as a support), Bucky glanced around and met Loki's gaze. Neither of them smiled—how could they?—but the matching nods they gave one another conveyed the volumes of their feelings.
"Where is it?" Odin asked, looking up at the vast number of rock formations that might or might not be caves.
"Up there," Loki replied pointing. The splenetic part of him wanted to lead them to the wrong cave, but there was nothing to be gained by such a petty move. They would figure it out and make him try again. Best to get it over with, he decided. "The rocks get a little slippery at the top, so be careful with him, as he does not have the use of his hands."
Bucky yelped in surprise and embarrassment when Thor threw him over his shoulder, the Claudette Colbert to Thor's Clark Gable. "Hey! I'm not... I can..." he sputtered, before dissolving into a few hysterical hiccups, and then resigned silence.
"I've got you," was all Thor said. Scrambling up the rocks was difficult enough even without another body to carry, so grunts were the most conversation he could make.
Loki frowned. Bucky almost never got hysterical. His shoulder must have hurt badly indeed, or else he had had an even more frightening couple of days than even Loki had imagined. Or both.
The sun had risen by the time Loki led them into the cave, but it had always been fairly dark past the rock-covered entrance. The soldiers entered tentatively, probably nervous that Loki was about to feed them to dragons or ghosts or worse. They lit torches as soon as they were inside. Loki had always brought a torch, but only a solitary one. Today, with six or seven lit all around him, he was seeing the place properly for the very first time. The first time, and probably the last. Loki had never thought of it as a particularly large cave, but he, his family, Bucky, and about ten soldiers were able to fit inside. The place looked completely different now, spoiled by their presence.
Thor set Bucky down and Loki pushed through a gap left in the soldiers' line to reach him.
Up close, and in better light, Bucky looked even more terrible. Pale and weak and his usually coiffed thick hair greasily unkempt.
"Loki," Bucky breathed. They both made an automatic motion to hug one another, but Bucky was stopped by his bound hands, and Loki feared squeezing too hard on Bucky's arm.
"Release his bonds," Loki demanded of the company surrounding them. "He poses no threat here. He cannot go back to his world like this. There is no one there who can free him from Asgardian cuffs."
The soldiers looked at Odin for their orders, but Frigga spoke up first.
"Yes, release him. And let them have their goodbyes."
As soon as his hands were free, Loki slipped his hands under Bucky's arms and held him tight. "Are you in much pain?"
"I look worse than I feel." He leaned into Loki's ear and whispered, "What's the plan?"
"There is no plan. The marble is gone. My father destroyed it. The knife will only work this once, and they'll be watching me from now on. The only way I could convince them to let you go home, to let you have a life, is by swearing to stay away, to stay here in Asgard for the next many decades."
Bucky pulled back just enough to press his forehead against Loki's and read his expression. His whole face fell even further at the truth he found there. Loki watched as Bucky processed all of this, as he looked around the cave at the soldiers that he was only now taking seriously. He watched as the reality of their situation settled in.
"Fuck. This is really it, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid so."
Bucky leaned in and kissed him, chastely, never mind how many people were watching.
"I meant what I said, the day we got here. No matter what, I wouldn't trade this for anything. Sure, it's gone to shit—it was always going to go to shit, I don't know why I let myself think any different—but you're still the best thing that's ever happened to me. I love you so much it hurts."
Loki choked back a little sob at the sentiment he had never heard verbalized, not in so many words.
"I was sitting in that dungeon yesterday—talk about something I never thought I'd be able to say," Bucky continued with a heartbreakingly wry smile, "and I realized I never told you. Not flat-out like I should have. But you already knew, right? I hope you did."
"I did. I know. I meant it, too, what I said when you were deliberating whether or not to take the shot. I love you, too. I will always love you. There will be no one else for me."
"Aw, don't say that."
"It's true."
"Only if you make it true. Look, I'll be gone before you know it, and you'll still be a young man. Don't make me the reason you spend the rest of your life—thousands of years—miserable. That's not what I want to be for you. Promise me you won't. Promise me you'll pick up and try to find someone else, something good."
"I can't."
"Stubborn bastard."
"I never pretended to be anything different."
Bucky kissed him again at that, this time harder, more desperately sad. They were so wrapped up in their sadness that they forgot other people were around, or else didn't care. Loki tried to squeeze different little places on Bucky's back, tried to map Bucky's mouth with his tongue, tried to memorize the feeling of his lips, one by one. But deep down he knew it was no good. These memories would fade with time. He'd forget what Bucky looked like, what Bucky felt and sounded like, how he tasted.
Eventually, someone coughed, and someone else, too, and then Odin's voice pierced Loki's consciousness more directly.
"That's enough of that," he said. "It's time for him to go."
One of the guards tried to separate them. None of them dared to touch Loki, but they, gently, at least, pulled Bucky backwards by the waist, pulled him out of the kiss. Bucky still leaned forward, lips pursed and eyes opening only when he registered the absence of Loki's mouth against his, a split second too late. The little frustrated moan he sighed out would have broken the heart of anyone not made of stone.
The next guard was not so gentle when Bucky fidgeted and struggled, trying to get back to Loki. He hit Bucky in his good shoulder to get him to calm down, but even in his good shoulder, an Aesir striking a human caused a lot of pain. Bucky's yelp snapped Loki's last remaining tether to politeness, to sanity.
"How dare you!" he shouted. "Let him go! Don't touch him!"
"Loki," Frigga warned. To the soldier she said, "You will be punished for this roughness."
A vague part of Loki appreciated his mother's gesture, but it was not enough to calm him. Ever since walking into this cave, ever since having to say goodbye, his anger and despair had reached a boiling point. Nay, volcanic. He hadn't noticed it at first, but now everyone else was starting to. The torches had been flickering for some time, more and more violently, until the guards had to duck out of the way of the waving flames. Now tiny showers of dust started falling from the ceiling.
The angrier Loki grew, the more violent the shaking became. He could feel a faint trembling under his feet, and could see the guards glancing down in fear as they perceived it, too. No one else understood what was happening, but Loki had felt this before. Not nearly as strongly, of course, but he remembered the mood he had been in when he'd first opened the portal and found Bucky, so long ago. But those childish outbursts were nothing compared with this justified fury.
Something Thor had said the night before came back to him, more pressing than before. In his straightforward way, Thor had succinctly gotten at the heart of the matter. 'What does it matter?' Thor had asked. What did it matter if Loki wanted this human? Everyone knew how many humans he and Thor had fucked during their sojourn in Medieval Europe, and no one had cared.
It didn't make any sense.
A vortex, similar the ones Loki sometimes caused in his goblets when he was brooding, except bigger, formed in front of him. But he barely noticed.
"It's time for the truth, Father," he said slowly. "Why are you doing this?"
Odin had been looking with subdued alarm at the crumbling ceiling. "I don't know what you mean. This is nothing but a distraction, a bid for more time, and I will not allow—"
"There is always some plan with you, some scheme," Loki interrupted. "The scene in the hall the other night cannot be the reason you are so set against my love affair. Thor has gotten into more embarrassing scrapes, has verbally defied you in front of the court in much the same way I have, and yet he has always been forgiven. Norns know he has littered his seed all over the Nine Realms, with no repercussions. And I have wracked my brain over the years, wondering who it is you might want to marry me off to. There is no realm with which we need to forge that kind of alliance. Mother, I know, would have had Vifill for a son-in-law, because she thought it would make me happy, but you never cared, did you? You never welcomed him the way she did. You would not have allowed her to talk you into it in the end. So, I ask you, what is the game? What do you gain from my misery?"
"Stop this nonsense and retrieve the knife, boy," Odin said, so sharply and quickly that Loki knew he had successfully struck a nerve.
"Tell me! Tell me the truth!"
Odin ignored Loki in order to point at a terrified looking guard. "I see the rope coming out of the cave wall there. The passage is there, and with it the knife. Get the human to it."
There was no way for Loki to reach Bucky anymore. The vortex at Loki's feet had grown big enough for a man to fall into it, and then larger still, until a few men could fall in. The soldiers stepped back towards the cave walls, out of the way of the growing purple hole in the ground. The torches had begun to snuff out, but the void created its own light.
"Tell me!" Loki continued to yell as he watched them position Bucky in the correct spot. He remembered what his mother had said about the cave, that it had the power of truth and travel. "If you won't tell me, I will find out myself!" Speaking more to the power he was channeling from the cave than to Odin, from whom explanation would never come, he demanded, similarly to his first time here as a child, "I dare you to show me the truth!"
The vortex swirled harder. It fed off Loki's rage, and that rage in turn fed off every hurt—both real and imagined—that Loki had ever felt. Today, unlike that first time, there were more real hurts than imagined ones, and he wanted to know why.
The light in the cave created odd shadows, with illumination coming from only a couple of surviving torches and the vortex. Therefore, it took Loki longer than usual to notice the change. It was only Bucky's increasingly wide, and increasingly alarmed expression that caused Loki to look down at his hands. Hands that had turned blue, covered in swirling lines. He raised his fingers to his face and traced the same kinds of lines there. It was the work of a moment to cup his hands together and spell his joined palms into a reflective surface. He had a sickening sense of what he would see in the mirror even before his eyes confirmed it. Blue skin. Still recognizably himself, but warped into a monstrous parody.
His life, he now saw, was the parody.
It all made sense now. His constant illness as a child, due to growing up in a climate and with a cuisine that wasn't quite suited to him. His eternal sense of not belonging. The ice magic that flowed out of him sometimes, unbidden and inexplicable. The fact that it had taken a visit to Jotunheim for him to finally go through puberty. The mysterious teasing the Norns had given him.
Even the seeming failure of the Lifeline Formula to work on him now made sense. It had worked. The potion existed to help the drinker reach the fullest potential of his race. The reason Loki hadn't seen the effects he'd expected was because he had never been Aesir. The most exalted and revered frost giants, he remembered having been told during their stay on Jotunheim, were not burly warriors, but instead were powerful mages. And his seidr had grown immeasurably since taking the potion.
He was a frost giant. A monster. The disgusting horror that parents used to frighten their children. The enemy of everything he'd grown up with. He wanted to skin himself, purge himself. Anything to make it—himself—go away.
Loki looked at his parents. Frigga's face was suffused with guilt, while Odin simply looked annoyed at having been found out.
"So, this… This is the great secret. The dangerous truth. Whose child am I?"
"You are our son, even if you are nothing but a disappointing jackanapes," Odin said. "Calm down now. Close this vortex. Open the portal to Midgard. Send him home. Secure the knife."
Even now, all Odin cared about was getting his hands on another relic, and it infuriated Loki. "Who am I?" he screamed, and this time, large chunks of the cave ceiling fell down. A few rocks hit the terrified guards. Others disappearing into the ever-growing vortex.
Odin must have realized that there was no calming Loki, and no reversing this crisis, not without some sort of explanation. So, he said, "In the aftermath of the battle with Jotunheim, I went into the temple and found a baby. Small, for a giant's offspring. Left to die."
"Whose offspring?"
"Laufey's."
"Laufey's son," Loki repeated in a daze. He thought through all the possibilities. "So, I was nothing more than a hostage, kept in a gilded cage until you could find a use for me. No wonder you refuse to allow me to follow my heart. Prisoners do not have such luxuries."
"You are not a hostage. The idea was to unite our kingdoms. Bring about an alliance."
"You hoped to absorb Jotunheim," Loki corrected. His stomach revolted. He could see the possibilities now. Loki would have been either forcibly installed on the throne of a realm that he hated, or used as the cause of a civil war, or, more nauseatingly still, married off to Thor, thus rendering Jotunheim a colony of Asgard. "Clever," he admitted aloud. "Quite a clever plan, thwarted only by your stolen relic being a living, breathing individual instead of a lifeless object in your damned collection!" The pitch of his voice rose, word by word, until he was shrieking the last ones.
"You have discovered the truth. Your lover will live. You got what you wanted. Now, quell this nonsense and close this vortex!"
"Loki, please!" his mother cried piteously.
He turned on her with undiminished anger, this time tinged with extra hurt. "You knew! You knew all this time and said nothing!" Next, he turned to Thor, who was looking between Loki and his parents with undisguised dismay. "You! Did you know of this?"
"No, brother. I am as astonished as yourself." And of course, it was true. It was impossible that Thor had known. He lacked the ability to dissemble something of this magnitude.
"Weren't you listening? I am not your brother. I never was."
"Quite the contrary. And you always will be."
Before he could think of a rejoinder, Loki's glance fell on his hands again. Another wave of revulsion rolled through him. Thank goodness he was wearing full armour; he didn't think he could stand to glimpse another inch of his own skin. He felt sick as he thought about the blood rushing through his veins. Jotun blood. He saw all the guards staring at him with the kind of disgust he felt, as well as a different, more personal kind of terror. They all knew that Odin would not allow them to return to the palace alive, not after having learned such a secret.
However, it was a glance at Bucky's shocked, appalled face that finally took all the fight out of him. For who wanted their lover to see them like this, as a monster? In addition to anguish, Loki now felt humiliation. Even if he could have saved Bucky somehow, come up with a plan, there was no way Bucky would want him anymore, not after seeing him like this. Such a sight was enough to cripple even the truest love.
Loki had received the truth he'd asked for, and lost everything else in the process.
Softly, brokenly, he uttered the words of the spell to unlock the portal. Anything to be free of the misery of watching Bucky's love turn to the disgust Loki now felt about himself. The portal glowed. Loki nodded at the nearest guard, who shoved Bucky through. Bucky vanished in a faint glow as the portal sealed itself up for good behind him. The knife clattered to the floor of the cave.
Odin moved to scoop it up, but it disappeared from his hands.
"What have you done with it?" he demanded.
"The Norns granted it to me for one return journey," Loki said blandly, numbly. "And now that it has been completed, I assume they have reclaimed it."
"You lied! You led your mother and me to believe…"
But Loki barely heard Odin's furious reprimands. He was listening to the roaring whoosh of the vortex instead. It had grown large enough that it had swallowed almost the entirety of the cave. Everyone had ranged themselves along the walls. Loki leaned over the edge and peered in. He did not know what lay at the bottom of that swirling void, but it couldn't be worse than here. He did not think that the other side held death, but even if it did, death could hardly be worse than the life that stretched out ahead of him—living as a hidden monster, surrounded by liars, subject to Odin's whims, never to see Bucky again.
Frigga must have read his intentions in his face, because she said, "Loki, no!"
"Brother, please…"
Loki looked up and gave Thor a wan smile that probably manifested as a nightmarish grimace on his ugly blue face. "I will never forget what you have done for me the last couple of days, Thor. Thank you."
And with that, he let himself drop into the vortex. The last thing he heard was Thor screaming, "No!"
The purple starriness and dizzying swirl of the vortex blinded him, but he did feel Thor's hand grip his.
Loki understood that Thor had jumped in after him. And Loki loved him for that. Loved him too much to let Thor throw himself away for a monster. He pressed Thor's hand with what he hoped was reassurance and affection, and then let go.