Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A distant memory, or a nightmare, one can never tell:

A piercing shriek of a child could be heard, one of pure horror, from behind the slowly closing doors. A woman kept murmuring coldly; as if the indifference held in the voice would somehow stop the screams. It didn’t matter much anyway, because when the sound-proof heavy doors clicked closed, the scream was already forgotten.
Below the eyes of a woman was another child; this one silent, and mangled, still twitching painfully.
She sighed quietly, took the scalpel in her hands and lowered her hand gently towards the chest of the bleeding body.

Now, right now:
A huge gasp of air woke Teuta up, which immediately calmed into normal breathing, so she’s not to give away a fact she had a nightmare. Not that all of her cellmates and enemies farther away didn’t have them; she just thought it best to not give them any more incentive to inquire into her being.
She quietly got up, jumping over the huge heaving stomach of her newly appointed bodyguard, Drachiri; a Kylosian who arrived a week ago; and upon seeing another member of his race, a woman at that, took it on his honour to defend her.
She winced at the memory of his ribs crushing hug. It almost took off her carefully faked markings and tattooed paint. Three months later, it was still fresh, bleeding and painful. Teuta wondered if she allowed Gullveig to deceive her.

Drachiri was dumb as a barren moon rock, but fiercely loyal, which came as a blessing at her current state of trying to survive inside the Tungsten A.
As the name implies, the ten layers of the prison walls were built from a dwarven made tungsten – unbreakable, so painfully thick and strong that it was virtually impenetrable… from both sides: it was truly important for the Centauri peoples to keep thieves out of prisons because even there they had extremely valuable goods. The irony hasn’t eluded Teuta, for she was primarily a thief, never quite managing to stomach exchanging money for the more gruesome forms of wrongdoing. The irony also hasn’t eluded the hilariously large number of other thieves in the prison, some of them not batting an eyelash to commit a ridiculously dumb murder to end in the A section of the Tungsten.
Nobody knew what the B section was, or if it even existed. There have been rumours that the B section is for the immaterial beings, angels and ghosts and such unthievable concepts. All in all, it was hard to let her imagination run wild as she placed her garish grey palm on one of the walls and understood, for the umpteenth time in her past five months in this place, that she is now the exactly same complexion as the fucking tungsten.

Sighing, she turned around. Drachiri was silently looking at her, slouching.
“Fair Lamaria, you appear to be touching these strong walls with the clear intent of breaking them down. We are strong, but not that strong.”
“Drachiri. Do you see that large A'askavariian trying to push that vibranium knife up his… in or out hole or whatever that may be?”
“Yes.”
“Go stop him and bring it to me.”
“Why? He appears to be enjoying it. As entirely repulsive as they are, they deserve to copulate.”
“A’askavariians don’t…” She shook her head, raising her eyebrows in annoyance. “Just do it, alright? If he doesn’t stop, in five minutes we’ll have another swarm of guards in here, and I can’t have that today.”
Drachiri crouched, his leather trousers squeaking horribly. It was a form of a bow among the Kylosian people. Teuta tried to control her breathing to avoid being further irritated; nodded her head and then continued looking at the walls. The ceiling was high enough for a number of larger creatures to avoid ducking.

There was a roar and a squeak far behind her. She tried to ignore it.

The humanoids were waking up, their collective genealogy forcing them all to try to find allies based on the feeblest of similarities.

A squelch of flesh and another shriek barely interrupted her gaze as it traced the connecting line in the metal back to its root: a carbon-based multilock with some form of electromagnetic force behind it. She has tried to figure out how it works, but the Centauri kept all of their neater secrets as secured as they kept their prisoners. For at least a hundred and thirty-four times, she sat on the nearest bench, annoying the more mentally challenged prisoners into fights just so she could observe the guards shuffling in and out while her eyes and ears were pinned at the series of clicks which allowed the multilock to click open. Not in order. Never in a repeating series of noises. Not even once in succession. She has counted it all, finding no pattern based on no schematics she knew of.

There was another sound of weakness behind her. This time she turned around, seeing Drachiri covered in black blood of the A’askavariian whose limb was twitching in the air.

She looked up to the ceiling in a gesture which implied skies and a single, powerful God – and not a series of annoying deities, and yelled out her protector’s name, cursing his uncontrolled temper as the A’askvariian started begging for mercy in his mother tongue. She counted down from twenty as she moved to the other side of the vast shared space, closer to her cell, standing completely still.
And when she came down to number one, the doors started clicking open, this time in a 4-4-8-1-1-1 pattern. Teuta gritted her teeth at the new rhythm and quietly sighed as four heavily armed guards burst in. Drachiri roared at them, making her eyes roll on their own. They kept beating him, and, while she felt a pang of sympathy for her extremely dumb friend, her eyes were pinned on the vibranium knife they pried out of his hands. Shame. That could’ve been useful.

It wasn’t unheard of. In fact, it was up to three times per day that the undercover – and quite frankly, underskilled – thieves of the Tungsten A tried to relieve either the walls, or the bars, or the guards of their possession. It allowed Teuta to gather a number of useful items. She had a seed of the Flora Colossus which just needed a touch of healthy soil from anywhere (though best choice would be a planetary system with the least amount of carnivore plants, for obvious reasons), shrunken golden casket containing something radioactive (the lack of both the quantum technology and a good suit kept her from finding out what it is), incredibly valuable supply of Zarg nuts which she used for bribery, a leaf blower which could be transformed into a proper gun in the right hands (soon), and a vibranium knife. Two would be better, as vibranium built by any other than the properly honourable and noble craftsman’s hands were, though undoubtedly powerful as fuck – terribly unbalanced. She tightened the belt of her suit, noticing it was coming undone.

And that was a single thing she avoided at all costs. The tattoos were, as previously mentioned, not finished. A few swollen ones on her back. A bleeding swirl on her elbow, stripping her skin off of the hideous grey colouring and revealing her human flesh. And the pantheons forbid anybody seeing her breasts, because those nipples were as pink as a flower, for she hasn’t allowed the Norse witch to touch her there. Na-ah. Some pains were better avoided.
A Kylosian was the obvious choice for a number of blaring reasons: their strength, paired with the lack of it in their brains, made them dangerous and uninteresting. A perfect combination for a highly secured Centauri prison where the ones that were smarter were always a target. And to those that were smarter, the lack of engaging ideas and complications that so often amuse and arouse busy minds was the best way to make them simply not care.

Just another caught Kylosian killer. Killed somebody defending the honour of their homeworld. Took very public and knightly revenge on an enemy. While loudly proclaiming they were the ones doing that. And repeating it at the trial, offended anybody would imply otherwise.
Even the most judicious and orderly law-abiding Centauri judges were starting to wonder is it a waste of time and the finely produced paper to go through the meticulous process of sentencing the Kylosi.

So, in Teuta’s case, it was a series of lucky circumstances, such as the judge’s kid was violently ill for the past three days and she hasn’t slept at all; and the AC broke down, leaving the normally composed Centauri lawyers twitching in their heavy wool garments; and of course, the Kylosian woman kept screaming her righteousness all the while – that it was one of the shortest processes in the history of the planetary system’s law practice. (*except for the time carefully erased from the records, where a lawyer, heavily drugged, was caught spouting his life’s seed into The Book of Alpha while yodelling. Both were criminal offenses worthy of an immediate death sentence. The culprit behind it was never caught, but the combination of the Datura plant and the chemically altered lysergic acid could have come from three places. A laboratory in the pirate haven on Midgard – though not likely; Sanctuary II. (which left the entire hierarchy of the judicial system eerily silent), and a certain magician/lunatic/god/prince of Asgard).

It worked well for Teuta. She escaped the possible inquiry into her persona and the true reason behind her imprisonment. Being relieved about containment inside the most heavily guarded space station prison in this quadrant of the universe was an odd thing. It gave her the time to regroup her thoughts. To work out the plan for hiding. To escape the grasp of Evil itself. …Eventually.

There were several possibilities. The least probable one was that she was going to break that ridiculous lock and walk out of here. That could take up to ten years of memorising patterns. The one option above that consisted of inciting a coup large and strong enough to break out all the forty prisoners of this block out of their twenty cells. Impossible; for nobody, not even Kylosi themselves are dumb enough to follow a Kylosi leader. A third possibility was an actually probable event of awaiting a person or persons of potential power, the magical kind, to break them out. It would require kinship on a level of revealing who she was underneath her guise (we’re talking ten layers of personalities here) – which was quite unlikely. A fourth one was seducing guard(s): Centauri were notoriously underfucked. Not that they were ugly; but they had a religious system which can only come from a humanoid species such as herself. No amount of spacetime width and breadth changed that. There were degrees of the low which a spy could bend herself to: sexual contact, even a mere, undoubtedly very quick handjob to a religious zealot was not one of them.
Now, the fifth possibility was a wholly different thing: shaped like a definite option from its foundation, it was the safest bet yet. An interpersonal lock with a creature which she was always able to pick, no matter how convoluted and complicated it got with time.

Three years ago, on Xandar:

Teuta was beginning to tap her foot annoyedly on the floor of the waiting room. It has been a whole ten minutes while the Broker examined the battery.
“For somebody that managed to almost get a degree on that loser cruiser, you’re really fucking impatient.”
Teuta sighed, darting a look at the furry face of her colleague, ignoring yet another jab on her university.
“What is he even doing with it? It’s not our fault the thing is almost derelict.”
“You’re right, it’s not our fault. It’s your fault. Three million units, you dumb human. Three million units and you put it on a risk for-“
“Goddamn it, will you let it go?!” She stood up, wiping a hand over her forehead.
“You’ll owe me if he doesn’t accept it.”
She nodded, forcing a strained smirk and walking away, to lean on the wall opposite of him. There were faint noises of a robotic machine picking apart and lasering through the rust behind closed doors.
“The fucking Broker. He knows. When he looks at an item, he knows exactly how much it is worth, how to sell it, who to, and why. They all know. Every single one of them. They’re doing this stupid, ridiculous parade for their egos alone.”
“Water is wet, dumb human.”
Teuta’s eye twitched now, she kept fisting her bleeding palms, reopening the crusty wound beneath the bandage. She couldn’t retort. Wasn’t able to do so through the mild guilt she felt, putting their lives on the line to save an unknown boy.
To summarize: they were about to easily extract the battery from the lair of the dune worm which quite liked his battery for reasons yet unknown to known universe; when she heard a cry farther inside the cave. She ignored the yelling voice in her ear piece telling her to leave it alone, and went further in. It was a lonely human boy, naked and trembling. She brought him out carefully, and almost succeeded in balancing the heavy, metal shavings covered battery and him in her arms, when the boy started screaming, awakening the extremely fat worm; who, upon seeing his battery fleeing away from him started wriggling – no, started stomping with loud crawls of its rolled body towards her. She got out just in time to allow her friend to blast the worm open with his laser cannon, tearing off a mercury filled fat roll which then, as these things so often do, exploded, covering her suit, the boy and the battery with the poisonous metal, which wouldn’t have rusted so quickly if there… If there wasn’t another, of course, added unfortunate scenario of the boy being some sort of beast which decided to bite his saviour’s palm quite heavily.
She sliced his neck, tearing his head clean off while her friend screamed and threw the battery inside the opened ship. She fell to the floor, writhing with the poison entering her bloodstream. Mixed with the mercury which now started eating through her skin, it was beginning to feel like she might have done something wrong. Cursing and covering the battery with the oxygen infused golden foil, he started the ship, correcting its course to reach one of the bustling cities of the galaxy. The Andromeda galaxy. It took two jumps more than reaching Xandar would. Which was, obviously, the reason the battery started rusting so fast.
The gravitational pull was a blurry memory of heavy vomiting and the thumping pain very close to her heart.

Next – first clear sight was that of the golden mask of Gullveig.
The first clear feeling was of the fluid running through her body, cleansing her from the poison. She felt better.
The first clear sound, when she finally focused and could comprehend what was coming out of the moving mouth of the mask (lip reading being one of the rare skills she completely failed to learn at her university), was a jumble of words.
“Of one, two, apples falling down a human tree; you, little girl, will always magnet them together.”
She cleared her throat.
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry, Midgardian.”
“I’m not… Never mind. Who are you?”
“Gullveig, your personal saviour. You’ve entered my home; you don’t get to ask questions.”
Teuta looked around. It was clearly not a home. There were shelves loaded with herbs. Moving herbs. It was disturbing to look at them, like the witch (what else could this woman be) trapped angry clouds inside jars, very angry poisonous green clouds. There was a blanket upon which a very small version of a bilgesnipe slept soundly. The southern wall was covered in glowing runes, painted with what seemed to be very radioactive.
“What the fuck is-“
“NO! QUESTIONS!” Gullveig suddenly roared, and the runes lit up, blinding Teuta momentarily. She fell down on the bed, trembling.
“Okay. Jesus.”
Gullveig loomed above her.
“And don’t mention that scamp.”
Teuta frowned, completely confused.
“You know Je- Oh, no questions. Sorry.”
Gullveig nodded fiercely, and the motion made all of her lustrous hair fall forward, dragging down Teuta’s chest. It was glorious, the shimmer reflecting the radioactive amarillo of the runes, but the colour was very hard to determine. It could’ve easily been yellow. Or orange. Or… the insides of the dune worm silver?
Teuta was just about to think of a way to ask without forming a question, considering the witch allowed her hair to float around easily – which was a questionable practice. Due to the fact nobody showed their hair around these parts. Andromedans were all, lizard, single cell, or mammalian, convinced (truly so), that the strength of an individual was contained within the hair closest to his brain (be that head or genitalia), and therefore kept it hidden or clustered together. They were silently staring at each other, and the witch was clearly thumbing through Teuta’s mind complexion, obviously finding something utterly hilarious – because she swung her wild hair backwards, whipping it against Teuta’s face and started laughing so fully that the entire room trembled. Faint clicks of jars shivering to the edges of the shelves and something akin to an earthquake forced Teuta on her feet.
Now she saw Gullveig was barely up to her chin, even though the woman seemed gigantic. She frowned, about to ask what’s funny, but the caution stopped her. Finally, she looked at her palm, the thumping pain there reminding her of the reason she was here: there was a minor bite wound, but it looked to be healing. Good. She was mad now.
“Listen, lady. I know you told me not to ask questions, but I need to find out where my friend is, which fuck took place in this place, your possible identity, and… the reason behind whatever that ratcheting noise you probably call laughter could possibly be.”
Gullveig grinned now, revealing golden teeth whose shine was unparalleled yet by anything other in this room – other than her gleaming, powerful mane of hair.
“Ahh. Not fast enough of a learner, you’ll have to be quicker than this. Rocket is currently trying to wash the battery outside my shop. Lots of fucks, the last one being with a delightfully dumb Centauri who barked like a dog each time I cupped his testicles. Gullveig, the saviour of Asgard. Possibly. And I’m heartily laughing because of serendipity.”
“Wha-… Khm. I…” Teuta looked around herself, not knowing how to respond. “Not an actual fuck. I meant like… Never mind. Umm. My head is splitting.”
“That’s not the wound or the poison. That’s you being hangover, boozer.”
Teuta nodded, annoyed again. “I did drink last night. Wait. Serendipity must be related to saving of Asgard.”
“Yes and no. I already did it. No, I won’t tell you anything about it. You’ll ask him yourself.”
“What? Ask who myself?”
Teuta fell back on the bed as Gullveig’s impossibly fast, and impossibly strong hand struck her over her cheek. She gasped and held it, before trying again.

“I’m guessing you mean Rocket. Fine. I need to get out of here. I’m guessing he paid you already.”
“You were his payment. He owed me a body to save.”
Teuta frowned. Attributing the high confusion to the alcohol still coursing through her, she decided to try and understand what is happening after she speaks to her friend.
“And no. I don’t mean Rocket. I’m thinking of them who rarely ask dumb questions. The ones that know the answers will present themselves. Liars. Obfuscators. Keymen. Illusionists.”

Teuta was blinking repeatedly, nibbling on the edge of her lip, before nodding brusquely.

“Well, one thing is definitely clear. I need to stop getting high. Gullveig, it’s been rad. You are very mysterious and you’re doing your witchy gig incredibly well. Thank you for healing me.”
She nodded again, turning on her heel.
“Oh, and, Teuta?”
Teuta squinted, biting her tongue not to ask Yes?.
“Your future payment will be one of that creature’s surgical pins. Remember this.”
Teuta frowned now, angry with not understanding anything.
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
Gullveig laughed again, striking her across the face with the back of her hand and leaving a minor gash caused by her sharp golden rings. Stumbling backwards, the doors of the shop flew open, closing quickly behind her as she fell down on the sidewalk.

Fast forward a few hours:

“I’ll give you one million. You ruined it on the way here.”
“Esteemed Broker, there were unforeseeable circumstances-“ Teuta began. Only to receive this answer:
“I was under the impression your humanoid partner was a first-class thief, not a common idiot.”
Teuta’s eye twitched. Rocket spoke now.
“Listen, pal. The battery is here, you’ve repaired it, you’ll get a lot more dough for it than we will. I agree that the broad here is a common idiot-“
“Rocket, what the fuck-“ Teuta tried.
“…but if you don’t want it, we’ll go straight to Rainu himself and sell it directly. Yeah, that’s right, whitey. I know who the buyer is.”
The Broker’s eyes widened for a split second before he retreated to his normally very reserved look – that of a perfectly subservient but dignified saleswoman in a shoe store for very rich, snotty ladies.
“Very well, Mr. Rocket. Two million.”
“Three and a half.”
“Two and a half, racoon.”
“Four. Or five even. Yes, a wittle baby racoon can count all the way from your shop to Rainu’s Kreean shithole, which is almost a six million units more. Metaphorically speaking.”
“Alright. Three million units and not a yen over it.”
“You got yourself a deal, my plastic fantastic man.”
Rocket extended his hand for a handshake. It was not given. Instead, The Broker wiggled his bony fingers for a few seconds, before typing out a transaction code on his mainframe. Rocket lifted his smartcard and waited for the notification to appear, before flashing a very big, racoony smile at the Broker.
Teuta turned on her heel and stormed out, absolutely furious she had to keep quiet the whole time. You see, she did not like being quiet very much. Except for when it suited a momentary puerile decision of giving a silent treatment. In those moments where she would be faced with a creature so childish and annoying she had to revert to the same state of mind to match the levels.
Which was not often. Except for when it was, because her loneliness drew her to the shadiest, edgiest characters, the ones that were as lonely as she was.
Other than that, she considered herself to be quite a galactical badass, and liked to speak like a galactical badass. With brains. Mostly.
All in all, the deal went rather well, although it left a sour taste of Rocket’s shining, hairy grin which had a good old “YOU OWE ME” gleam all over it.

Now, the Tungsten A, while Teuta is sitting on the table, her legs on the chair, pondering current events
:
There was no counting how many favours they did for one another, under the guise of owing each other. She knew it, of course, that her only true friend would also never call it friendship. And he certainly wouldn’t leave her stranded here. The word of her current whereabouts must’ve reached him in the first month of her incarceration; and he was smart enough to conclude the why: she had to have been in the hiding. From her mother of course. And her mother’s companion who almost got to her back on Xandar.
Teuta brokered a deal with the Broker. In exchange for giving Rocket the information on where she’s going next, Rocket will pay a million units to him. She laughed loudly now, imagining Rocket’s face when he was offered the proposition by plasticky icky man he hated so much but had to work with.

She sighed, tapping the bandaged shoulder of Drachiri, who was beaten by the guards, defending her honour. Seeing that she felt endeared by the strange affection of this dumb stranger, she knew her monthly bleeding was approaching. It’s been a month without the medication which delayed it: for professional reasons, where she often had to evade beasts drawn by blood. She was out of it, being where she was and miscalculating how long she’ll be here. Because when it hit, it hit hard; all the mumbo jumbo witchy medicine of the universe could hardly keep human hormones in check. They simply saw no reason for putting efforts into that lost cause.
Yes. That’s it. That’s the cause of the affection. And of missing her friend. And of starting to feel quite lonely and anxious in her disguise. Yup. No other possible reason.

She sighed again, going to the southern end of the unit, where there was an opened wall, offering view of the solar system. The expanse was ever so vast when the lights were off, full of familiar and unfamiliar stars, quite bright due to no closer planets screaming light pollution at it. With only an air curtain keeping the sky away, prisoners enjoyed a view unmatched by all others. There was beauty to it, if one could appreciate it.
The reasons why the opening was there were of completely different nature, naturally: Anybody who couldn’t keep up with the more claustrophobic aspects of being jailed was free to go. It also meant that the frequent fights, the bloodier ones that couldn’t or shouldn’t be resolved by guards had a finishing line: being thrown into space. It served as an unprecedented deterrent from anything more serious than a brawl.

Teuta often slept by it, especially in the first month, when the fear of torture she evaded couldn’t overcome the fear of possible death by defenestration into the Alpha Centauri. But now she used it to try regain calmness, if not sanity.

The quiet she was in was suddenly halted – lights went on, blinding her momentarily, and there was the robotic voice of the AI supervisor.
“New prisoner to cell three. New prisoner humanoid. New prisoner entering in twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…”

The countdown served as the reminder to clear out the bunk in the cell. Spare beds were used for spare personal shit. That shit needed to be gone by the time the prisoner entered. The supervisors claimed it was due to functionality and orderliness they were so very proud of, but the fine print of the claim said that the new prisoner may be the most violent one so far and take it out on their cell mate the second they walked in. Teuta remembered her arrival: she was holding a folded thick blanket and a change of uniform, along with a bar of soap she never used (not because of its obviously poor ingredients which would leave her itchy without the lotion she was clearly not getting, but because of the freshness of her tattoo wounds and the possibility of its ink being, well… ink and not magically enhanced tribal grime), when a human humanoid holding his tattered clothes and a pencil started crying upon seeing a Kylosian woman who was to share a cell with him and started running toward the opened wall, screaming “I can’t take it anymoreeee!” and threw himself out.

There were two creatures running to their cells now. A Kree woman who was to share her cell with the newest unfortunate soul, on her way to scoot her belongings to her corner; and Teuta, laughing and running to her cell to get the Quarnyx battery. You see, Rocket loved them. He used them to break out of thirty-three jails so far, and even though it was useless here, she thought of it as a welcoming joke for him. He was finally here! A few days of having fun with their fellow prisoners, and then they’d be out – gravitational jumps shivering through her bones, a new pair of vision-enhancing mirrored lenses, kazillion adventures, lots of booze, and the merry-go-round escaping the authorities with her bestest friend in the whole world-  wait.

Wait a second.

“…ten, nine, eight…”

They said humanoid. Rocket was not humanoid. She held the battery, frowning suddenly, her grin wiped off of her face.

“…five, four, three, two- two- two-“
She turned around. Everyone was grouped at the entrance, excited to see something, anything new happening in this place. The counting stopped, robotic voice repeating the sequence: there were sounds coming from the outside. A scream. A hit, undoubtedly a punch. A couple of grunts. Another few kicks.

“New prisoner coming in in two, one, zero.”

There was air released, a sequence of 6-2-3-3-1-7 opening the multilock, and the doors hissed open. Teuta still held the battery, now leaning on the fence of the upper floor where her cell was located, trying to see between the bigger and smaller heads and backs of the crowd at the newest member. She couldn’t. She leaned a bit more, still frowning and tapping her fingernails against the top of the battery.
They were obviously lying on the floor, because the crowd bent over to get a good look. The two guards who deposited them there retreated, but not before yelling at the rest, and the doors hissed closed, with the expected stronger clack of the multilock securing them.

Teuta waited. There were four sighs of disappointment; four people retreated back to sleep. Three more fuck this were heard, and three more people went away. She jumped down now, not being able to resist, and walked over.

There was a thin man lying face down on the ground, a patch of blood next to his shoulder from the hits when he undoubtedly tried fighting the guards one last time. Which meant he was dumb. There would be another sigh of disappointment; this time from Teuta, if there wasn’t for the interesting detail: his hair was as black as that universe visible behind her, and as gleaming; gloriously full of shine when the lights suddenly went off again, bathing everything in darkness. She wished now she kept her mirrored lenses inside her eyes, to see better in the near night.
The hair, reaching almost the small of his back was braided, though messily, into a thick braid.
The skin on his hands was milky white, making them seem as if the long fingers were glowing in the seedy grimness of the prison.
He let out a moan of pain, twitching, trying to press his palms into the cold metal floor.

“Drachiri?”
“Yes, Lamaria?” Her guardian was as always right behind her.
“Help him to his cell.”
“What does this disgusting pale creature have to do with-“
“Just be of help to him. Please.”
Drachiri brushed her shoulder with his when she turned around to go back to sitting on the edge of the southern wall and stare into space. She heard him dragging the body to the cell and the faint grunts of resistance behind her. Still holding the battery, Teuta sighed, fixing her eyes on the lone, shiny star far out at the edge of the galaxy.

Chapter Text

Teuta woke up one of the next mornings, feeling like seven different hells. Well, nine; one for each of the Realms in this hell of a universe. Her solitary confinement was too small. The blanket on the floor didn’t disguise the hard metal much, so her back hurt as well as her hips; and the cold had seeped through her bones, bringing that dread of pure hopelessness. It’s not the first time she’d harboured these feelings, and had to dig down through the layers of the cold, and the angst, and the depression to find that seed of courage. So she got up, forcing herself to stretch thoroughly, for at least an hour, controlling her breathing and focusing on the barely perceptible swoosh of blood through her veins. Or something like that – which she’d now begun hallucinating after the long days of her cherry-on-top punishment.

Videlicet, she’d allowed herself to fall asleep with the stolen quarnyx battery in her hands; right in the middle of the shared prison space, where the guards saw her immediately upon entering.

The absolutely atrocious stupidity of the act left even her shocked, and the rest of the inmates indifferent; seeing as how nobody was surprised that a Kylosian would do something like that.

She was thrown into isolation for the ten days. With barely any food. Or space. Or light. Or air.

There isn’t much to say about not differentiating between day and night and trying to guess what the thick, mustardy fluid was (soup, obviously), or what the slimy sloppy piece of sponge was (overcooked vegetable of alien disposition); not much about the occasion at all. Using the strongest titbits of her imagination, she fashioned herself a hermit’s ritual of creating rhythm in the vapid surrounding, and tried to hibernate all other sensations to deal with later. So, she fell asleep in the night she fashioned this darkness around her to be.

A thud of metal woke her, with a guard instructing her to get up. Guiding her through the walkways and hallways, he brought her back to what used to be a prison, but now seemed a luxuriously, lavishly decorated oasis. She was blinded once again by the amount of light, and covered her eyes for a few seconds, just as something grabbed her shoulder.

“Mistress Lamaria! Your stench is far greater than it was before. It is akin to a dying animal which defecated herself after being stabbed through. Perhaps like a garbage eating creature, a raccoon.”

“You’re the one to talk shit, you excrement-coloured Nimrod,” replied a very familiar voice behind Drachiri. Teuta’s breath hitched, and she forced her hands off her eyes and squinted, waiting a bit before the images focused enough for her to recognise the triangular, furry silhouette. It was her friend. She felt a wave of painful relief and fell down on her knees, starting to sob violently.

“Rock-et… Ro…” She tried speaking, but failed at it miserably. He approached her, holding her by the shoulders with his small hands, an unusually sympathetic expression in his large, friendly eyes.

“Hey, idiot girl, calm down. Drachiri isn’t lying, you smell like Quill’s toilet after a chilli eating contest.”

She let out a snort of something akin to laughter. She held his wrist for a few minutes more, her painful eyelids closed and breathing, calming down slightly.

Loki was sitting on the bed in his cell, the third one from the exit/entrance, calmly reading a book and chewing on Zarg nuts when the doors opened and a guard allowed a female prisoner in. She was a tall Kylosian with crinkled, tattered prison garb, covered in various stains; no doubt bodily fluids. Her skin wasn’t even a normal, hueless Kylosian shade of ugly, it was almost as red as her markings. Obviously fresh from detention. The other Kylosian who was strangely friendly to him ran to her, followed by the only inmate he had a normal conversation with; the speaking Midgardian raccoon. Which was the reason they had conversation; he had never seen that sort of an animal talk before. Quite witty, cynical, and full of underlying hatred, which only meant he could be a possible commodity in these dire circumstances. The woman cried like she was dying, and kept pulling at the raccoon, sobbing and trying to speak; a scene so desperately hideous it kept drawing his attention away from his reading material. They knew each other well, judging by the loving expression in Rocket’s eyes, and the softness with which he patted the matted jungle of the brown Kylosian hair on her head.

Teuta required a shower. Evading it earlier, when the concern for her disguise outweighed the self-disgust, no longer mattered: for the stench and the state of her skin and her precious openings longed for the normally cold Centaurian water and that excuse for a soap which now seemed a bathhouse specialty. Drachiri helped her call the guards. They wouldn’t normally rush the process of dragging prisoners to the showers and back again, but this one was so truly repulsive they couldn’t resist it. She was grateful for every drop and scrubbed even the magicked hair clean, holding the dark strands in her hands. She started to miss her own, usually blonde, hair. The process was longer than needed, and guards kept rushing her, but not even that dampened the enjoyment of reaching a semblance of normality. Braiding her hair messily back on top of her head, to make it look as matted as it usually did, she pulled on clean clothes and endured the pain in her newly moving feet to walk back to the cell.

Drachiri helped her to her bed. She told him to leave her alone for now.

“You okay?” Rocket asked, squinting.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just need a few hours to adjust. This is your fault.”

“Right. Why did you have a useless battery anyway?!”

“It was supposed to be a gift for you.”

“Oh. Figures.”

“You’re late, rat.”

He grinned at her.

“You got sloppy. Can’t handle even a single jail without my majestic help.”

“It’s Tungsten A. Nobody can handle this.”

“I can.”

She grinned back, though weakly.

“What did you do to end up here?”

He looked around himself one more time, making sure nobody was listening in on them.

“I wrecked that Skrull ship. You remember that idiot Raksur?”

“No way!”

“Way, my dumb human friend. It was piece of cake. The Andromedans reached me before they did, not suspecting a thing. I’ll tell you all about it. Right before I pull one million units from down your lyin’ throat for making me go to that polyurethan breather.”

Teuta laughed heartily now, a first real laugh in the longest time. The chime of it echoed through the entire cell block, reaching the ears of Loki, who frowned.  That doesn’t sound like a Kylosian laughter.

“Shh, don’t call me that.”

“Yeah, I was about to get to that. A Kylosian, are you for real?”

“Who else, with my height?”

“Well, you’re truly ugly now. Not your usual ugly. This is assaulting my eyes. And what’s the deal with that beast? Is he your boyfriend?”

“Who? Drachiri? He’s been useful in protecting me. They’re incredibly loyal to their kind. It’s… Could’ve been a lot worse.”

“Are you letting him be loyal to your tattooed cu-“

Teuta grabbed his skinny neck. He hit her hand and she let go.

“Obviously not, fur-face.”

“Whew. Good. I was worried I was getting into another hot boozy mess. Like Quill. Remember Quill?”

“Rocket…”

“Fine, don’t get your panties in a bunch, I won’t mention him. Geez. You’re sensitive. Are you… doing that thing dumb females from… your home world do monthly?”

Teuta sighed loudly.

“Yes.”

Rocket looked around, trying to change the subject by finding something in her cell to talk about, when his eyes landed on the inmate sleeping a bit farther away, on the floor of the shared block.

“Anybody useful around here?”

“Some. Drachiri is strong. There’s the Kree, seems a traitor, could provide distraction. Also, another Centaurian called-“

“Kree in cell three? With Frode?”

“With who?”

“Frode. The Asgardian; gaunt, angular, pale anorexic?”

Teuta frowned, fully confused. Then it dawned on her, with a flashing image of that sleek black hair in her mind.

“Oh! Right. No, haven’t met him. He arrived the evening I… fell asleep with the battery.”

“Wait, you fell asleep? Laid your big ass down on the floor, closed your eyes and fell asleep? You are even more stupid than I remember, Tea. Not even Groot would do that, and he has the brains of a tree!” Rocket hunched over, laughing loudly and tapping the bed with his fist. Her eyelids dropped down half-mast as her nostrils flared. She didn’t know what to say. Battling between choking him again and hugging his annoying person for she was so happy to see him, she got up and walked out, leaning on the fence and looking down. After five minutes of insulting her, he joined her, looking down on the chattering inmates.

“Oh, man. Tea.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Right, right. Mistress Lamaria. Honestly, it suits you more. You’ve chosen a near perfect physical image to accompany that slow-firing bundle of nerves inside that huge head-“

“Rocket.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Oh, this was worth the entire process of getting here. I haven’t laughed this hard in months.”

“I’ve missed you too, fur-face.”

She smiled at him. He winked at her.

There was the brief alarm signalling meal time.

“Shit, I’m starving.” Teuta spoke, before running down to get a seat on one of the tables. Rocket joined her. Drachiri saved her a seat, crouching in that horrible manner of respect. She caught herself almost smiling, before shaking her head. Could it be that she was actually endeared by this creature?

She ignored Rocket for a few brief moments before trying to grab the stew she normally ate, so fully hungry that she didn’t even dread the horror that awaited her taste buds – when Drachiri caught her by the wrist.

“Mistress Lamaria, in honour of the suffering you’ve experienced, I’ve saved you pork. Including my share. It is well deserved.”

“Uhh, thanks, but I’m good. I think my stomach needs adjusting first, so I’ll-“

“Mistress Lamaria, it’s the holy food of your honourable peoples. You have to accept it. Oh, hey man, sit with us.” After inviting the stranger to their table, Rocket smirked at her, trembling with barely held back laughter.

He knew full well how much she hated pork. One time, in a Sakaarian pub, she intentionally lost a bet to a Skrull just so she evaded having pork. That was a deal breaker. If somebody wanted to subdue her, break her every resolve, get all the answers out of her – all they had to do was push pork down her throat. She endured beatings, being pierced with various instruments, being drugged, kidnapped, schooled, silenced and made to wear pink ballgowns, but she drew the line at – pork. Now she glared at Rocket with the strength of the thousand despising suns.

Suddenly, she realised she was so intently focused to trying to shred Rocket to pieces with her gaze, she hadn’t even looked at who had joined them at the table.

Turning her head to her front, she was met with the pair of the greenest eyes she had ever seen.

No, not eyes; glowing poisonous forest pools.

Priceless emerald facets in the deepest caves on Earth.

The seaweed reflecting sunshine at the moment of its ripest existence. Sounds died out, she was alone now again, only aware of that colour.

She actually held her breath, her expression turning to a blank one, her head cocked to the side. When she managed to break the connection to his eyes, she saw the sunken dark circles underneath them, the gash on his pristine white cheek, the breaking of light underneath the chiselled cheekbone. He looked tired. Disconcertingly unable of not holding attention on his persona, but very, very tired. His hair was braided, resting on his back where she could not see it.

“Huh?” She asked, again hearing the sounds of her surroundings; realising Rocket was speaking to her. She looked at him.

“Are you picking up what I’m putting down, dumb girl? Hello?”

“What? Sorry, I’m not focused.”

“Pork. Eat it. You love it. Amen.”

Her eyelids dropped down again; she was gritting her teeth. Ignoring the stranger for a moment, she turned to look at Drachiri, taking his hand into both of hers.

“Drachiri, no. You can have my share.”

“I understand it is a grave insult to your nation to refuse a meal of pork given out of free will.” The stranger spoke suddenly. He had a dark, lustrous voice. A ridiculously true statement poured from it, so it was equally pleasing and annoying her.

“And who the fuck are you?” She said sharply, now glaring at him.

“Frode.”

“And should that mean something to me?”

His eyebrows lifted up, he seemed shocked by this.

Loki was shocked by this. This must’ve been the first Kylosian ever to utter a simple statement which contained more thought behind it, rather than an elaborate sentence without a nook or cranny of further meaning hidden inside. She seemed to be stunned by him for a full minute earlier. Not that this was a surprise to Loki. All manner of intelligent creatures and the ones less so were either attracted to or afraid of him. More of the first, generally. But never, and this needs to be well understood, never had a single Kylosian thought (or said) anything other than a horrid insult to the qualities which made him different from them. Even his first night here, when the giant Drachiri dragged him to his cell, he said something about the flakiness and the slimy white of his skin before dropping him to his bed. Who was this woman?

“And who are you?”

“Lamaria. It would be a true pleasure to make your acquaintance, Asgardian, but it was marred by your brave attempt at explaining the customs of my own people to me.”

He smiled for a split second.

“My apologies. Please, do not let me interrupt your meal.”

She nodded brusquely, before holding Drachiri’s hand. Another weird gesture.

“Drachiri, my noble Drachiri, I am…” She seemed to be looking to the floor, thinking. That was again bizarre. “On a fast. Yes! A fast! Umm… I am… fasting… until… umm, yes, that’s right. I’m fasting until the moment I rip the spine out of the last of the warriors who dared murder my husband. Yes.”

“Your speech is slurred; you’re sounding more stupid now than before. It is a sacrifice, I see, fair mistress. I understand.”

Rocket’s eyes were watering from how hard he kept laughing, banging his little fist on the table, making the cutlery jump up and down. Loki wondered what was so funny. The woman, certainly, but why?

It was probably due to her unusual nature. Yes, he noticed them hiding in her cell and talking. They were acquaintances of some sort, perhaps a criminal nature. Maybe, most likely, he needed her brutality for a heist (he was obviously a thief), and used her slightly elevated mentality for reasons yet unknown. Yet. Meanwhile, she slouched with obvious relief (what was that about?) and began lapping at the stew like a hungry dog. He dared a look at Rocket, who winked at him.

“And some Zarg nuts. That’s all I need.” She said, mostly to herself, before rising out of her chair and walking back to her cell. The nuts were not in the hole in the metal wall, carved by someone before her time. She frowned, searching the rest of the cell. Nothing. She hurried back to the table.

“Rocket, where are my nuts?”

“What nuts?” He looked genuinely confused. She looked at Drachiri.

“Did you touch my nuts?” She asked.

“Did you touch his nuts?” Rocket added, guffawing. She grabbed him by his throat. Nobody else even flinched. Teuta was about to say something else, when Drachiri spoke.

“I gave them to the Asgardian.”

“You what?!”

“I gave them to the Asgardian. You told me to be of help to him. And then you were taken away. So I took care of him until you’ve returned.”

Teuta couldn’t help herself, she looked to the ceiling for a moment, before taking a deep breath.

“Not literally, Drachiri. Just to take him to his cell.”

Drachiri frowned, truly not understanding a syllable.

“Ok, fine, whatever. You, Frode, give me back my nuts.” She looked at him, trying not to look too hard at the green of his eyes.

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?” Her red eyes were gigantic now, as she got closer to him. He kept blinking, obviously trying to understand why it seemed she was a more intelligent race than she was. The outrage of a Kylosian is followed by an old-fashioned demand and quite a literal threat. She was just waiting for him to explain himself.

“I quite like them. They’re the only balanced food in this cell block. And they’re mine now.”

“No. They are my nuts, and you were not supposed to get them. It was a misunderstanding, Asgardian. Give them back.”

“No.”

She jumped on her feet, banging her palms against the table and looming over him. He didn’t move an inch. Rocket held his spoon mid-air, looking back and forth between them with intent amusement.

“I will gut you like a fish, you haughty fucking skeleton!” She yelled loudly now. Ahh, there it is. She might be dumb after all. He grinned at her. For a split second, she was distracted at how wide that smile was, showing his perfect set of teeth underneath those thin, pink lips. It was a smile of a… no. She can’t be thinking about that sort of a smile now.

“Ooh… what will you do now, Te-Lamaria?” Rocket asked. Loki didn’t miss a hitch in his voice, storing it in his memory for later. Teuta did what she did best. She assessed the threat. Long fingers: blades. Good. She was good with blades. The best.

…Perhaps he was better. Asgardians were notoriously long-lived. More time to develop skills. Tall, very tall. Taller than her. Physical advantage – both the general strength and probably speed, considering she was still extremely weak from her malnourishment and the stiffness of her limbs. This was not a fight she could win. Right now, that is. Normally, yes, of course. It brought her great pleasure to see the look in their faces when she would almost always win.

Loki observed her. Her eyes were fleeting, looking him up and down, her splayed fingers on the table twitching, as did her full, bland lips. Lips that could’ve looked quite shapely if they weren’t that colour. No matter. She was thinking again. Weird.

Then she slouched and sat back down, asking Rocket to give her his nuts. He cackled several times and drew out his own pack. She opened it slowly, too slowly for a creature of a Kylosian rage (un)control, before eating one at a time, never taking her eyes off of his. He squinted.

“I need to rest.” She said, slouching all the way down in her chair. Loki remembered that she did, in fact, spent ten days in the punishment that the Centaurians deemed proper for this sort of a prison – quite an uncomfortable experience. One cannot understand the qualm of not knowing whether, in the pure darkness of the room, your shit hit the bottom of the bucket or the floor from where it most certainly shan’t be picked up by the guards. She truly did need the rest; and for a reason still unknown to him, he decided to reschedule the teasing he planned for her and not enact it now, in the perfect moment of weakness. Loki told himself it was due to the time needed for the scheming, and not the glaring obviousness of how confused he was by this surprising creature.

Loki was not surprised very often anymore. That’s why this event didn’t raise concern to him. That’s why he was here in the first place.

Three weeks ago, on Proxima Centauri b:

The Ravagers got there before him, which was entirely Loki’s fault. Had he not gotten into another reckless, chaotic indulgency trying to recreate his lost sexual art, he would have been there sooner. Sadly, as he was standing in the burning room of the ship, he was so full of loathing for what he had become that he hadn’t even noticed a shift in the atmosphere where the officers had landed a bit farther away.

The face of Ronan’s greatest mediator was covered in splotches of what used to be cerulean skin and quite beautifully carved true-blue insides. It was distracting. His body felt distracting.

The sensations running through him, the hangover, the disappointment, an onset of depression even – were so strong that he didn’t react at first.

He knew of the cure; Gullveig, a cast out, an immensely powerful witch who confronted Odin (and won) had told him of it. He found her at the capital of the Andromeda, Shangri-La, at the haven for pardoning souls. A free nation, tied loosely together by a series of aesthetic principles. Not that there weren’t any crimes; however, all of them had a truly natural way of being resolved: they melted into obscurity as the collective disapproval of the established, mellow, and soothing flow of life cast the perpetrators out. To the garbage bin of Alpha Centauri, with their steel-enforced law gravitas.

All in all, Gullveig resided there, host to a practice which helped all manners of creatures get better. From illness, from obscurity, from incompetence. The prices were… undeterminable. Often arcane, vague, illogical; but always attainable. Sometimes it took decades. But every single treated soul was compelled to pay it, for Gullveig had found a way to tap into the largest pool of riches the Universe held: the need for balance in the status quo. For a cure of the manipulated mind, she might have sought the very magical item causing it. For mending bones, there would certainly be obtaining a rare metal (gold, always gold, she couldn’t get enough of it). If a woman seeking pleasure entered, she gave it to her, considering her own pleasure a price paid. For wounds, the price depended on the form: a cut would require capturing a wild, beneficial animal; a stab heralded fixing a deflated zeppelin; and a bite from a demon required rare medicinal equipment.

When Loki entered her shop, she squealed and hugged him. He had been her favourite student, back on Asgard. A truly smart boy who understood balance, for he always tipped it the favour of Chaos, something rarely appreciated in the heavenly domain of Odin (which is a story for another day). Loki had qualms about revealing his issue, but there was no point in embellishing it:

“Gullveig. I can’t get it up.”

He expected laughter and wittiness which could only come from a woman who took truly immense pleasure in a solely male weakness. She didn’t laugh. She ran behind her billowing eggplant died curtain, gasping. There was a noise of glass clanking against glass. She came back with four jars of soil and a vial of red ink.

“Gullveig.”

She started opening the jars and mixing the dirt in a large wooden bowl, not paying attention to him.

“Gullveig.”

She sighed. He sighed, looking at the jars on the shelves. Frogs, flowers, dirt from various worlds, vibranium shavings, an undeterminable paper crumple, acid rain drops, angel tears, charred bones, healthy bones, cod’s liver, Viagra (didn’t work), painkillers, lizards’ tails, and finely ground single origin Arabica. Nothing that could help him. He had tried it all. Gullveig finished completely stirring the soil and covered it with saran wrap (which was apparently a multiversal item).

“Gullveig?” He asked, immediately taking a step to his right to avoid the impending slap of her bony hand contorted with the weight of the golden rings upon it. There was a faint whoosh of air past his left ear where she missed him.

“I heard you, gelding.”

“I’m not-“

“Shut up and listen to me. You must go to Una-Rogg-“

“Oh fuck that Kreean cunt-“

“You did, unsuccessfully. Shut up. A bionic needle from her custom-made antimatter laser, inserted to the hilt- to the HILT, gelding - should solve your issue.”

Loki’s expression of disgust melted into that of disbelief, his arms disentangled from their position across the chest as his jaw dropped down.

“How can anyone- why should- there is no taking such pain, Gullveig. You’re playing with me.”

“I’m not. There’s no blockage in the matter of life and death and sex that cannot be pierced by that bionic needle.”

“I have never heard of this.”

“You mother was lenient with your studies. I told her this, often. You were lazy. Prone to idiotism. Too impulsive.”

Loki took a deep breath.

“Very well. Now, I wonder what the price for this extravagant treatment of my best feature could possibly be. Or is the pain enough?” He asked, immediately ducking her next swing.

“Believe me, my poor boy, if you don’t go immediately, you’ll find yourself longing for something as sweet as pain.”

He frowned. Her amber eyes were suddenly glassy.

“Never mind. She’s on Proxima b. Pass me that vial.”

She said, and he held the red ink.

“I’m supposing this soil has something to do with me.”

“No, this is for another idiot of your calibre.”

“You do tribal tattoos now.”

“It seems I do.” She said nothing more, and for a while, there was only silence disturbed by the sound of dirt being soaked in magical ink. Loki stared at the mixture, thinking about the impending pain his beloved prick will soon go through. He nodded to himself and turned around to exit.

“Loki?”

Gullveig wanted to warn him about a number of things to come, or to give advice about how to handle incoming uncertainties – she was compelled by how much she loved the boy – but she knew not even he could understand, so she shook her head and said, vaguely, but with a wise smile:

“Do not resist it too much.”

“Resist what?”

She grabbed his throat, squeezing tightly to punish him for the question, all the while smiling serenely.

“The law, or the love.”

He frowned as she released him, coughing and observing the doors of her shop closing in front of him.

In a few days he was on the burnt ship of Una-Rogg, watching her body that had been mauled by the Ravagers while Centauri officers were cuffing him. It was quite futile trying to convince them it wasn’t him. They knew who he was, they knew how much he lied, and were adamant this was a revenge of some sort, considering the relationship with this woman in the past. He did feel sorry for her, despite how they parted and how she tricked him (if anything, a good hoax, or a swindle of his persona would only make him hard as a rock and as wanting of a good fuck; alas, that was also lost now); because she had fallen in love with Ronan and all her powers and charms were lost to the mindlessness of his fanaticism. So maybe she was better off dead anyway.

Now, right now:

Loki wasn’t certain he cared about the state of his flaccid sex. Not now, after the beating and the process. He was depressed again, a most cumbersome state of mind; something rarely penetrated by any of the usual excitement. A state of being which equalled enduring life. Not that he hasn’t laughed or been excited - it sliced through the humdrum of breathing, grazing the upper layers of connecting with the world -but never, never, never shaved off the thick fur of complete stillness he craved all the time.

It always took a long time to get through it. He sighed in his cell, heavily. Luckily, his cellmate, the Kree woman, was very silent. She never even spoke to him, existing like a ghost. It was comforting, that he was able to ignore her. After the first two days of restless sleeping while he tried recovering from his wounds and painful joints, sleep didn’t come regularly. He would get up and sit in front of the luckily opened southern wall, to stare into the numerous stars of this otherwise hideous planetary system. It brought stillness and unmovable sensations, something which provided a bland semblance of comfort.

So, he went there.

Forgetting even the momentary laugh of annoying the weird Kylosian inmate, he slouched on the indentation on the floor. It was an ass-shaped pitting, from a very, very large ass. Apparently, an obese giant fell there before accidentally falling into space. Nonetheless, it made it more comfortable to sit on.

Teuta couldn’t sleep. She was still hungry, still annoyed, still in pain. For a while she lay on her hip, holding her palm on Drachiri’s forearm, finding comfort in a touch of a relatively friendly creature after ten days of nightmares and heavy breathing. But dreams evaded her, her mind fearing she’d wake up there again. Deciding to go let the vast universe bring possible peace, she got up and wanted to jump down to go sit there, in her place.

Teuta was proud of how quiet she could be. Decades of training to be a spy gave her the ability to move about unseen. And when she grabbed the fence of her upper floor, she saw him there. Him there. On her spot. The Asgardian.

Teuta smiled.

Slowly moving down, she went to the right, instead of to the left, where the opened wall was. She went in the direction of his cell. Making absolutely sure he wasn’t looking, she sneaked in, seeing the Kree awake.

A kind of kinship existed between them. Teuta felt bad for a creature betrayed by her own race, a woman who seemed to be awoken from their fanaticism and military ways. They made friends months ago. She even considered revealing her disguise, wanting desperately to have anybody see her for who she really was. So now, when she entered, the Kree smiled lightly at her, extending her arm to point at the foot of the Asgardian’s bed, silently. Teuta grinned, lifting the mattress of the bunk to see the large bag of nuts there.

It wasn’t even hidden. She frowned, expecting there to be a challenge of some sort. She was slightly disappointed, even. Sprinkling two handfuls of them into the Kree’s hand, and winking, she took her bag and exited, silently making way back to her cell. Lifting Drachiri’s snorting head, she flattened it in his bumpy, contorted pillow. He never woke up.

Now what? Teuta licked her lips, not being able to resist it.

Loki thought he felt something. Not farther away, how he normally felt it, but the faintest whoosh of soft air right next to his ear, very warm, moist. A breath. He flinched and turned around, seeing the Kylosian woman’s grinning face.

She laughed loudly, before sitting down right next to him.

“Not many people can sneak up on me.”

“Not many people can see me coming. At all. And then they’re dead. So not even then. Maybe they become ghosts, so then. Perhaps. We never know, do we?”

He smelled heavenly. His hair was full of the long-lost scent of pine trees and frost. It was so intoxicating that she let out a breath, alerting him to her crouching behind him.

“Frode, you’re in my spot.”

“This is my spot.”

“You could’ve been mistaken, while I was in detention, but that is definitely my spot.”

“What do you do here?”

“Sit and stare out. What else is there to do?”

Loki blinked at her, confused.

“But you people don’t think.”

He said, straightforward, knowing that wasn’t an insult only to the Kylosian. She shrugged, chuckling.

“I don’t. I just stare out.”

“Oh, figures.”

“Yup.”

He looked out, his concentration interrupted by the heat emanating from her thigh which was almost touching his. He looked at her leg, seeing the wide prison trousers lifted up slightly from her height, revealing a red-marked ankle. It was unusually bright. Yes, that was it. The markings were flashy, glistening crimson, instead of the faded rust they normally were, considering they got them as children, after a series of rituals. Maybe she underwent them later on in her life? Weird.

Suddenly, his thought was cut off by a sound of crunchy chewing. He looked at her face. She was chewing. Staring right into his eyes, she brought a Zarg nut to her mouth and put it in, slowly. Chewing, her full lips were full of tiny crumbles which she licked off; first the upper one, then the lower one. Loki didn’t know what he was thinking. He was aware of the fact those were his newly acquired nuts, but that wasn’t the issue here. Why was he staring at her lips? Greyish, dark in this night here, they wouldn’t be noticeable to this extent. Normally.

He lifted his eyes to meet hers, full of mocking and daring. He laughed, before looking back out. It was a true laughter. Weird.

“My nuts, thief.” She said, eating on. He couldn’t keep the smile completely off his face, nor had he wanted to.

Teuta observed the silhouette of his face lit by the faraway stars, the perfect cheek slightly lifted in a smirk. She wanted to kiss it, wondering if it would be as smooth as it looked.

She shook her head, dismissing that urge, and got up.

“Well, I’m not hungry anymore. Good night, Asgardian.”

Before she turned around, he grabbed her ankle. She looked down at him.

“Why didn’t you eat the pork?” He rubbed his thumb on the inner side of the ankle, noticing how incredibly thin it was. Too thin for a Kylosian.

“It’s disgusting. If you want a nut, be a good boy, do me a favour, and maybe you can have one.”

He laughed again, letting her go.

Before she fell asleep, Teuta felt the heat of his hand still radiating through her leg for a long, long time. It was incredibly soothing.

Chapter Text

For the next few days, Loki observed her. Wanting to see how she would react if not provoked, he approached her, asking for a meal of the nuts. She said he was to bring her a vibranium knife.
He did.
She was surprised as to how: Loki used a bit more of his seidr to reach into his pocket dimension. The look on her face was worth diminishing the limited magic he still had.
He kept observing her. Everything she did was weird. She’d send Drachiri on small, ridiculous missions, and then facepalm at his proclamations of honour, or truth. Almost like she was annoyed by the creed of her people.
Loki was reconsidering his stance, seeing that he perhaps misjudged things yet again. It seems individuals of worth could arise out of everywhere; like her raccoon friend. Loki knew he was most likely a lab experiment, but that only lent to his worth: he got away. Brilliant, and cynical, they quickly became conversationalist friends… Although each time Loki approached him, Lamaria would get up and walk away, clearly annoyed with him.

“How do you two know each other?”
“Ahh, from a lifetime ago. But that’s a sob story for over a bucket of whiskey. Or two, if she’s going to be there.”
Loki now looked at him.
“A Kylosian alcoholic and a thief?”
Rocket laughed.
“Pretty smart broad if she’s not near a bar.” They were both looking at her prying a ring out the Skrull murderer’s hand, waving a finger in front of his face. Drachiri roared behind her, and the Skrull scuttled away. She nodded, before putting the ring on her hand.
“And who is he to her, her boyfriend?”
Rocket snorted.
“Why do you ask?”
Loki shrugged. Rocket smirked, looking at his profile. Teuta got her knives out, threatening a small crowd of inmates who dared challenge her, wielding them as in a dance. She then looked straight at Loki, who squinted at her. She squinted back and continued her speech. Rocket alternated looking at her, then him.
“Like I said. Pretty smart broad in some ways, dumb as all you humanoids obviously are in others.” He tapped Loki’s shoulder with his palm.
“What does that mean?”
“Never mind, Asgardian boy. Listen, in a few days I’ll know about my friends’ ship. Be prepared.”
Loki nodded, holding back the words, I am a god, you dull creature.
Rocket had a pretty good plan, which is why he went with it. His friends’ ship would bust through the defence line outside the prison, and Loki would use up all of his remaining magic to keep them breathing until Rocket powered the tiny platform that was to take them to the ship. That was the gist. The very condensed gist, for the elaboration of it would hinder the more interesting elements of this story. Such as the fact Teuta became aware of her body in that way that makes her want to join it with another.

She began ovulating. Teuta’s dreams now were a tangled mess of limbs and fluids. When she was awake (and unengaged in fencing), she would stare at the Asgardian, aware of the scent of him, of the exact shape of his nose, or the length of his long arms. She felt saliva pooling in her mouth from how incredibly attractive he looked. It was annoying beyond measure; so she took to avoiding him, making it clear she didn’t want to talk to him.
One night they all sat huddled up in her cell: Teuta, the Kree, Asgardian, Drachiri; all listening to Rocket’s elaborate plan. She insisted on Drachiri joining them, saying she owed him.
Loki leant back on his palms on Drachiri’s bunk, feeling something irregularly shaped and hard beneath his palm. He smiled, realising it was her nuts. He carefully pulled a few out and started eating them loudly.

“Put those back, thief.”

Loki grinned, putting another one in his mouth. Her eye twitched.
“Spit that out.”
“No.”
“Te-Lamaria, leave it be, you’re interrupting me.” Rocket added. “Now, as I was saying, I’ll need the copper because of the-“
“Goddamn it!” She yelled out, jumping to slap Loki’s hand holding the nut, making it fall. He grabbed her wrist with his other hand. She twisted it and pulled, grabbing his throat so very fast even he seemed surprised, before he pushed forward to throw her off-balance. He tried to use his forearm to knock hers away, to, of course, turn her around and pin her against the wall. However, Teuta knew that move, so she took a step sideways, around him, this time with his pointy chin snug in the crook of her elbow. He let out a gurgling sound and grabbed the back of her thigh, throwing them both back on the bed. Everyone moved away from them to avoid being kicked.
Rocket rubbed his eyes with his thumb and his middle finger, shaking his head.
“Every fucking time. Every fucking time, Tea. I’m going to bed. Get me a vat of melted copper tomorrow. Yo, Kree broad, I’ll need your blood as well. Is that cool? Okay.”
He kept muttering to himself while walking away from them. Drachiri was about to come to his mistress’ rescue.
“No! I’ll take care of him myself!” She yelled, elbowing Loki in the gut. He yelled out in pain before grabbing a matted bit of her hair and pulling it, hard. He was on his back, and she was laid over his stomach, trying to turn around to attack him – but each pull and grab was reciprocated. He clearly knew of her fighting style, which was interesting. He’d seen it around these parts many times, exhibited by the Unseen ones: the spies-for-hire, fresh out of the Unseen University.
“It is quite refreshing that they extended the application form to so many humanoid races!” He said, pushing her face into the mattress while she tried scrambling for purchase on the slippery plastic sheets, grunting.
“What the fuck do you know about it?!”
“I’ve killed so many of your colleagues, I can practically teach there.” He wanted to whisper to her ear, but considering she was snaking beneath him, he grunted it out. His voice shuddered through her, making her mad and wildly aroused.
That annoyed her. She arched her back and kicked him with her heel, making him yell out again. It wasn’t real yelling; they knew they couldn’t attract the attention of the guards, so the muffled nature of it sounded to an outsider like a very energetic fucking session. He let go of her and she slithered out, grabbing his lustrous hair and pulling his head back to kick the back of his knees, which gave out. The second before his knees hit the floor, he extended a calf, making her stumble and start falling as well. She yelped when her elbow met the metal, and turned on her back to avoid having her face meet the same destiny. Loki loomed above her, holding both of her wrists very hard against the ground. He sat on her thighs to immobilize her.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” She huffed, snarling at him. He could feel her breath on his face. When he opened his lips, it entered his mouth, making them taste sweet. She could see his pupils dilate, close as she was now.
“Who are you?” He asked, his honeyed voice caressing her ears.

Teuta felt her cunt prickle at the colour of it. Every part of him seemed delicious. His lips, slightly cracked, pulled into a smirk. She wanted to bite it off his face, but not really: she wanted to just get her frustration out.
Loki saw her red eyes roaming his features, extremely entertained by her unceasing willpower; she still twitched against his body. He wondered, why was it so entertaining? It seemed the past few years of being unable to achieve a physical form of arousal was starting to deviate his mind, because there was no explanation as to why he found someone like this attractive. She hit her head on the floor in anger, looking away from him. He chortled at this, looking up her arms. His eyes traced her revealed skin, glistening with the markings all the way to her right elbow. Which was a patch of pink, clear skin. He frowned, momentarily releasing his grip.
Teuta didn’t hesitate. She knocked her forehead against his (fuck, was that marble?), making him lose his focus entirely, before she kicked him off, turned him around and pinned him in the same manner. Still breathing heavily, trying to ignore the pain in her skull from the bang, she slowly became aware of the bulge of his cock between her legs. She scooted lower, to sit on his thighs instead. Skidding over it made her cunt prickle with desire, like a wave of slick sweetness over her mound. Doing so made her lean closer to his face in order to to continue pressing his wrists against the ground, for he was taller.
Loki knew he could easily throw her off. She wasn’t nearly as strong as he was. But there was something hypnotic that stopped him. Several strands of her hair came loose. They were glued black, and dirty. It seemed unnatural. Her eyelashes fluttered when she adjusted her position. Oh yes, he felt it too, the hitch of her breath when she rubbed herself on him. It warmed his body, it amused his mind, but there was no helping that ungrateful cock of his.
He smirked.
There was something soporific about her eyes, like a spell hidden there, like she was keeping something from him. Perhaps the reason why her breath was so sweet, why her ankles were so thin, and why she was so irritable with him. And why in the Nine were her lips so lusciously shaped, parted and wet and so close to his?

Not noticing the A’askavariian snitch watching them from outside the cell was his fault, Loki thought.
Teuta shivered upon seeing him.
“Is this a fight?” He hissed at them. “Where is your cellmate?” 

Teuta was starting to feel afraid. She couldn’t go back there. She couldn’t be locked up again, it was too much, she’ll lose her mind, and what if Quill comes while she’s there? They’ll all get out and she’ll be trapped here, forever listening to the sequence of unlocking the multilock until she loses her sanity and dies. Nobody would know it was her. She’d be buried with her tattoos, forgotten and entirely mad.

Loki noticed her grip loose now; she was trembling. He saw the pure fear on her face and knew what she was thinking.

“What do you think? Would you care to join us?” He hissed back at the creature, before holding the back of her head and pulling her down for a kiss.
He was right: her breath was sweet. She tasted like the caramel filling of a pavlova cake. He lapped the inside of her mouth with his tongue, greedily. She let out a very surprised moan before standing still for a few seconds, losing control as sure as that invading tongue felt like he was inside her already. Every nerve in her body seemed to twitch and send signals of arousal to her mind. His lips were cold, skidding over hers and wetting even the skin around her mouth.
She moaned again, and Loki thought it a figment of imagination when the sexy sound made his cock twitch, so he concentrated on the incredible taste of her.
She felt her shoulders loosen, slouching down on him.
Now she joined in the kiss, dragging her full lower lip over his, and when he huffed a breath inside her mouth, she enclosed them around his, pushing his tongue back with hers, before rolling it around for good measure.
He was making her weak. And wet. So, so weak she let herself relax on his body.
Kylosian women don’t have breasts like this.

Loki saw that. He’d watched her leave her cell this morning, her hands beneath her shirt at her back, tightening something. She was binding her breasts into something that was hooked on her back. He wanted to feel them on his hard chest, seeing how the pressure made him forget all else. Like the A’askavariian. Oh shit.
He broke the kiss, looking behind her. The creature was gone, obviously repelled by their making out. She followed his gaze, before looking back at his face, licking her lips.
“Smart.” She cleared her throat with the half-word, repeating it again when her voice almost failed her. “Right.” She added, swiftly rising off him and up on her feet, adjusting her clothes.
He got up as well, staring at her.
“Who are you?” Loki asked sincerely, frowning and licking her taste off his lips, before grabbing her wrist to see her mark-less elbow. She pulled her hand out, covering it with a sleeve.
“Winner of this round.”
He smiled for a moment, remembering the look of pure fear in her eyes. It was an unpleasant sight, evoking a purely instinctual reaction in him: he wanted to do something to protect her. He had no idea why.
He thought it was because that meant protecting himself as well.
It wasn’t.

“Where is everybody, anyway?”
“Rocket got mad and left. Ignore him.” She said, cracking her neck. “Thank you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Saving the… situation.”
“I hate detention.”
“Hear, hear.”
“Who are you?”
She tightened her lips.
“If we’re to cooperate, I need to know who you are.” He spoke, carefully accentuating each word.
“You’ve said it yourself. I’m a spy, trained. Freelancer.”
He nodded, seeing that he wouldn’t get any real answers now.

She turned her back on him, stiff and tight, waiting for him to get the signal. He did, looking her up and down one last time, before sighing and exiting her cell to return to his own.
When she felt his presence gone, she slouched down on her bed, covering her head with her pillow and muffling a scream. Teuta was drenched, turned on and aching. There was a hollow sensation in her sternum, a hollow sensation in her empty walls, a hollow, swirling chaos of desire in her mind. She’d half hoped the Asgardian would rip a hole in her prison pants, pinning her against the floor and jamming his obviously large cock inside, while kissing her like he did; like she was making him drunk and hard, licking the inside of her teeth as his hardness licked against her sopping, pulsing walls.
“Mistress Lamaria? Can I come in? You’ve won?”
“Yes, I did.” She said, muffled by the pillow.
“What?”
She removed the pillow and let out a heavy breath.
“Yes I did, Drachiri. I showed the Asgardian our true nature. He cowered before me.”
“Well done, Lamaria. You’re not entirely incapable after all.”
“Yeah. I need to sleep now.”
“Of course, you’re very weak.”
“Yup.”

Looking at the darkening of the skin on his waist, Loki frowned. She fought better than he thought. Not good enough still; but much, much better than she should have. If improved with the implants the Unseen used so often, she’d be… terrifyingly good.
A bit irritable, but that was to be expected. He was, indeed, very irritating. Especially when he did it intentionally, knowing a good, purely puerile provocation gets the ecstatically childish response in return. It made him giddy.

There was no escaping it now. Teuta knew she was attracted to this creature. Everything about him screamed her type. She could remember the exact last moment she felt like this: it was when she met that cad Hermes. Nope, she will not let her mind wander back there. No dealing with heavy emotional shit when you’re in a jail with nowhere to go drinking when the ugly truth reared its nasty head.
She waited for Drachiri to leave for breakfast, and then she went through the process of removing the copper device from her insides, the one which exuded the medicine needed to disbalance her hormonal changes. It was useless like this, and she threw it in the vat Rocket placed on his bed, sighing.
“I’ll get a new one when we get out of here,” was all she said to him when he eyed the wires with disgust, before going to the dreaded cell three, with the vibranium knife, a tube and a clean vial Rocket supplied.
Where he kept all of those items was a complete conundrum to Loki. Unless he stored them up his tiny butt. The Kree rolled up her sleeve, displaying the veins there to Lamaria. She knelt down, helping pierce the skin and ease the blood out.
“The Kreean blood is full of nanodevices which cleanse them of diseases. They can be reprogrammed to serve whatever function we need them to. Well, a very simple one.” She started explaining to Loki, who was leaning to observe the process, without him actually asking anything.
“How do you know how to do that?”
“Take blood? I learned it. I was quite good at medicine.”
“Was that your major?”
“I never graduated.”
Loki turned his head to the side to look at her profile. She met his eyes.
“Too stupid?”
He asked, smirking at her.
“Too smart,” she replied, looking away.
“Hmm. So they kicked you out, didn’t they?”
“You know, there is a witch who really hates questions. I’m beginning to understand why.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised slightly.
“Gullveig.”
Teuta looked at him, placing the vial down and taking another one. Kree was leaning her head on the wall, meditating with her eyes closed, fully silent and not really present. Wise.
“She’s Asgardian. I know of her; we grew up on those stories,” Loki said, avoiding the possible question. “How do you know her?”
“She helped me heal a bite wound. I still owe her a surgical pin.”
“Fair price.”
“What kind of a pin?” The Kree suddenly asked. They both looked at her. “I can get you one.”
“No. As advanced as your technology is, I need something even more sinister. I’m not even sure I’ll ever acquire it.” She looked to a point on the metal floor, her eyes receiving a thoughtful shade. “I’m just stacking up my debt.”

Prior to her arrest:

“You’ll need a host,” Gullveig said, wrapping Teuta’s upper arm in a linen bandage, having finished that segment of the tattoos. Teuta was covered in sweat from the pain, heaving, trying very hard to stay completely still. Despite her wishing all she needed was a muddy rub-on and some red pen, it was, naturally, a lot more complicated than that.
Purely Kylosian in its fashion, the process required an obscene amount of pain, because apparently everything they did was so clean in its enactment it left no wiggle room for improvisation or easing thereof. The dirt was from their home planet, coarse and hard. Very fertile, it conglutinated with everything organic immediately, becoming a somewhat conscious sentient matter. Normally, that meant the vegetables that were grown were of the most exotic and tasty kind. A type of a radish bursting with magnesium to strengthen one’s muscles. A perfectly formed pumpkin seed with exactly the same amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat (measurable within a millionth of a milligram), or a superfood to rule them all, Zarg nuts, with hylopathian molecules allowing them to reorganize into anything needed for the eater, be it iron for the blood, B complex for the brain, or an endorphin rush for the soul. Above it all, Teuta craved their fruit. Not just for the arcadian orgasm of a ripe mango, but for fermentation, because nothing hit as wonderfully, masterfully complete as hard liquor from a Kylosian berry. She was thinking intently on half of the bottle awaiting her in her hideout, meditating on what the taste, and indeed, the effect of it was, when Gullveig spoke:
“You’ll need a host.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear everything you said.”
“Stay still. For the magic. When you’re done with this, I want my magic back. That’s your price.”
“Fine, I’ll just get back here first thing after I get out.”
“No, you’ll need a host.”
“You can just extract it back out with your witchy stuff.”
“No, I can’t. You need a host to put it into. It’s too dangerous in its raw form.”
Teuta thought about this for a second.
“How am I supposed to-”
Gullveig slapped her face. She’d intentionally left it to tattoo last, considering she needed an expanse of skin to hit the girl, knowing there would be a barrage of questions making her break out in a rash of pure irritation. Teuta sighed.
“I was just getting to that.”
“Get to it, then.”
“Small body of still water should do the trick. Maybe even a bath tub filled with nice, 524-carat enriched water. No harm in a bit of extra oomph for my effort.” She shivered with the pleasant feeling, closing her eyes for a second before continuing her work. When the needle pierced Teuta’s skin again, she whimpered, waiting for the witch to say more.
“And a host. The stronger, the better. I’ll take all I need, perhaps even a bit extra, out of it.”
“Sentient host.”
“Of course.”
“A magician.”
“Or a sorcerer. Or a witch. Thaumaturgist, a measly archmage, simple spellcaster, even a repulsive magus, druid and a scryer will do the trick. By the Nine, I’d eat up a necromancer as well. But do not, and I cannot accentuate this enough, do not even think about giving my magic to a quaestionjurer. Those sluts are beyond help.”
“I could just stuff a monk pig with it, I think. Tie her up.”
“Nope, it needs to have a will with which to take the magic willingly.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to ask a wizard for help without me owing him something.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” Gullveig stopped, observing her with a lustful swirl in her amber, pupilless eyes. “Those breasts look like they might be useful.”
Teuta laughed.
“Stop moving, these patterns are intricate. Look at this beauty. Makes me wonder whether I chose the wrong career. I could’ve been sipping those angelic margaritas on a Kylosian beach and bathing in liquid gold.” She sighed, before continuing to drag the last shred of Teuta’s sanity out of her with pain. When they were nearly finished, Teuta groaned.
“Not the nipples, please…”
“They’ll stand out.” Gullveig said, licking her lips. This hellraising process seemed to be enriching the amber of the witch’s eyes, and Teuta saw it as pleasure. She did not feel like being the object in that creature’s wank bank.
“Let them, nobody will see them.”
“Suit yourself, little girl. Are you sure?” The witch took a step towards her. Teuta took a step back while allowing the paint to dry up a bit. In her wariness she didn’t realise she leant an elbow against the eggplant curtain, which, colour-receiving as it was, would later on have a spiral shaped crimson ornament on it. And which would leave her elbow pink like a newborn’s bottom.
When Gullveig laughed and let her out, she saw it and grinned, knowing that what seemed a mistake would jumpstart the whole charade that awaited her luscious human client.

Now, in cell three on Tungsten A:

“Your pins can’t help me. Thank you, though,” Teuta said, looking directly into the Kreean’s eyes, even though she felt bad for deceiving a possible friend.
She thought it a brilliant idea. The nanotechnology, as mentioned, was sentient. It could hold a neutrino network of power for just enough time to store it in a container and take it to the witch. Loki saw the intensity in her eyes. It got him very, very interested. The Kree just nodded and got back to meditating, knowing the time for discussing this would come when it should. Teuta took ten vials, just in case, and left her with a large supply of Zarg nuts as a makeshift excuse for tricking her.

Loki followed her careful stride back to her cell. He hid, and sneaked around the cell block enough to see her handing Rocket only two vials. Weird. Interesting. She’s hiding something. He was quite certain it had to do something with Gullveig. There was a pattern of a scheme underlying all of this. Like a cobweb of mystery, titillating his senses. Loki inhaled deeply, feeling the hunger to participate in it. That night he slept like a baby, before awakening to a wholly lost sensation of true excitement.

Loki ate the disgusting stew, staring at her, realising that, all of a sudden, he felt better.

Truly better.

He was not numb, not fully anyway, and he smiled at this. Finally, there was something of interest in this dull monotony of events that followed him the past few years. For several hours, he thought about prying the secrets from her via a more traditional method of seducing her. He was no fool to himself; he realised he was attracted to her. Loki had lived long enough to know nothing is certain, not even the idea that he knew all there was to know about himself. While it was entirely possible to - probably, most likely, to a quite firm definition - make her talk simply with his fingers and tongue tracing the patterns around her sex (he felt a warmth in his malfunctioning nether regions at this), he couldn’t call that a successful seduction of the object of desire. He couldn’t have deprived his cock of the tightness of a willing cunt.
Plus, it’d be too easy. Loki didn’t like easy, not when he was trying to chase away apathy. It needed to be complicated. And there was the danger that it was her mystery making her this attractive. Loki feared the quiet, dispassionate disappointment which was most likely to follow after he solved it. Knowing such truths was always a danger. Her skin would go back to being that horrid metallic grey instead of this network of patterns which started to fascinate him despite all of his prejudices. Her blooming spirit would dissipate into thin air and she would be just another Kylosian inmate.
So he held onto the slow easing into finding out, one step at a time.
There was always something surprising for him to acquire. And he was already excited for the future event this would bring about.
Concentrating, he found himself duly prepared for every outcome. Steel will. Nerves of tungsten. Scheming god. The perfectly witty trickster. Every movement a calculated, refined perfection. Not even a misaligned blink of his eyes.

Oh, it was a joy to find all of his willpower: Loki walked to her cell in the middle of the night for a little surprise visit. He was going to sneak silently, to walk in and ask: “What will Gullveig do with seven vials of willingly given Kree blood?”
Grinning to himself on the way there, he hopped the last few steps and slid in from the side. Drachiri was fast asleep. He stood behind his bed, staring at her profile from the shadow.
She took off her prison shirt. Loki’s mouth opened slightly. She cracked her neck both ways and took to untying the heavy gauze around her torso. Once, twice, thrice she undid the wrapping and took it off, exhaling a large amount of relief once the feeling of constraint loosened.
Loki was frozen in his position as the silhouette of her full, round, rich breast sprang before his eyes. That is definitely not a Kylosian breast. No. Wait. What if it is? What have I been missing out on? Loki felt his testicles tightening. He looked down. It wasn’t a figment of his imagination. There was that familiar, prickly warmth growing through his stomach, enveloping his insides. He licked his lips. She cupped her breasts and squeezed the tissue, sighing quietly with the relief. The softness spilled out of the sides of her fists as she kneaded them earnestly.

Slightly lost for a reaction (and of course, an erection), he didn’t hear the first second of the alarm. Teuta flinched and let go of her (incredible) tits, grabbing the gauze and wrapping it back around herself as the alarm started blaring very loudly. Drachiri groaned in his sleep. Loki was crouching in the far shadowy corner where the two cells met. Teuta kicked Drachiri’s shin with her foot as she pulled on her shirt.
The lights went on. She was pulling her vibranium knives out of the meticulously hidden crack in the metal wall, before turning around to see if Drachiri had woken.
Loki jumped up, caught like a deer in the headlights. She flinched, startled, before opening her mouth to speak.
“What is happening?” He asked before she could.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you did something to start the alarm.”
“Why me?”
“You and your giant cause a lot of troubles here.”
She started shaking Drachiri, and he finally started waking.
“Me and my giant? How did you get here so fast?”
“I’m fast.”
She was frowning at him, shaking her head with confusion. He had a blank expression, obviously hiding something.
There was commotion in the cell block. They both ran out and were flashed by the blinding light of a missile burning through the air curtain and directly towards the entrance doors. A tiny blue light signified internal burning as it sizzled through the multilock, effectively soldering it closed. Screams were heard; a creature held its arm which dripped green blood as it was writhing on the floor. Teuta grabbed the fence, shocked for a few steady moments until Rocket’s voice got through to her.
“Fucking Quill! Tea, grab the vat!”
He kept yelling instructions, dragging his platform out, a makeshift tungsten bar raft he apparently pulled out of nowhere, pouring the melted copper into the little channel running down the left side.
“Who’s Tea?”
“Move!” She yelled back at the confused Loki, pushing him to the side. Drachiri was fighting the Skrull who tried to reach her and Rocket. Loud yelling and fighting was interrupted by an earthquake: the guards were trying to open the doors. Rocket cursed, his neat handiwork at risk. Loki lifted his hands to blast magic at the few inmates going for them: everybody figured out this was their escape plan.
“NO! We need your magic!” Rocket yelled, motioning to Tea. She jumped up, dragging her knives out of the belt of her prison pants and ran into the crowd of punching limbs. Loki went after her, sliding below Drachiri’s large bicep to twist the neck of his attacker.
There was a shadow outside, a growing silhouette of a ship coming into view: again, chromium lights blinded everyone for a moment.

“Good evening, fine citizens of Tungsten A! I’m sorry for interrupting your sleep, we’re just here to pick up a few of our good old pals, and you may continue your rest!”
Teuta rolled her eyes when she finished pushing the kneecap of the Skrull out of its place with her boot, before slicing his neck open. She moved closer to Rocket while he was finishing up.
“What is that idiot doing?!” She yelled, breathing heavily.
“He’ll blast the curtain up, we’ll need to move aside!”
“You said he’ll whoosh it out!”
“I said he’ll exuviate the nitrogen out into the space, hydrogenate the outside cast, and allow it to dissipate!”
“Isn’t that whooshing it out?!” Teuta yelled, kicking away a twitching A’skavaarian limb, belonging to an inmate who got too close.
“It isn’t! There’s no time, he fucked it up because he’s an imbecile! Now he needs to blast it! Go signal him to do it in four minutes!”
She starting avoiding the fighting to run to the very ledge. Teuta was lit by the cumbersome amount of light, and could barely see what she was doing, but she used the universally standard signal which Quill could clearly read.
“Oh hi there Kylosian! Wow, not ugly. I’ve had one of you before, and I cried myself to sleep, so, no, bad girl, you can’t come with us! What is that, a middle finger? Rude! You fuck off! How do you even know that?! Oh. Oh. NO WAY! Rocket?”
She tried very hard not to use the sign language to rip him to pieces – deciding she would do  that with her mouth later on - and spelled out her name and code.
“TEUTA! HOLY SHIT! HOW ARE YOU?!” She could hear Quill’s annoying, hugely magnified voice, even more loud now that she had her eyes closed to block out the chromium lighting.
Loki was still fighting, slightly off his usual speed due to hearing that name repeated incessantly. Teuta. That was obviously her name.
There was another earthquake, and Drachiri got up, seeing Teuta in front of the nose of the huge ship. Thinking she was in grave danger, he roared, stomping inmates with even more fervour.
“Got the countdown? Yes, I know you’ve calculated it! Ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six…”
Teuta finally turned her back to the light, trying to ignore Quill’s chirpy voice to focus back on the fight.
It seemed to last forever; she already had an opened wound on her shoulder. Loki noticed her blood running red. He squinted and jump flipped into another newly acquired enemy, trying to get closer to her. Somebody pushed Rocket over. Loki yelled out and ran into the fool, taking him down to the floor.
The countdown got to fifteen. The doors pushed open with a terrifying quake of the whole room. Quill saw them opening.
“Fuck it! Rocket! MOVE OVER! Five, four, three-”
Rocket called Loki, and they slid the platform over to the right side of the opening and ran towards it.
 
Drachiri didn’t understand anything.
Everything was fire, and light, and blood. Danger was always another form of living, just as breathing was. He breathed in, he took another swing at another Kree murderer. And defending. He grabbed a collar of the creature attacking Teuta and ripped his arm clean off in a single stroke. And defending, again. She ran towards the light. He didn’t know why. So did the Asgardian and the animal. She followed them, and he could hear her screaming for him to come with them. He ran towards her. There was another incredibly quick babble of words from the animal, and Teuta began running to the other side.
“-two, one!”
If they thought they’d seen enough light, they hadn’t. A blinding haze of the blast had them covering their eyes and yelling out with the pain. Teuta had’t managed to cover them completely, seeing Drachiri run towards her. And defending. He would run straight into the blast, the idiot. She screamed out and jumped in his direction, not thinking at all, just reacting.

Time could often move more slowly for Loki. Sometimes, he’d use his godliness to make fractions of seconds more languid. Softer. More elegant.
It took a chunk of seidr – and this time, the mesmerizing green light dissipated around him as he threw himself up, and over Rocket, straight into Teuta’s chest.

The vivid, soul-cleansing, crushing white of the explosive flew below his thighs as he grabbed her harshly and sent them careening into the opposite wall.
Teuta was aware of her jumping, and now aware of the pain of being smashed against the wall.

And dying. Drachiri didn’t feel it. In one second he was there, and the next –

Teuta breathed heavily. Loki’s arms kept shaking her, and she could see the metallic blood of Drachiri strewn across the floor as particles of dust and metal and organic matter were being sucked out. Guards flew by, expunged into space. Limbs, and creatures, and skin – all flying out.
“COME ON!” Rocket yelled out, and Loki picked her up and threw her over his shoulder while reaching the platform.
Teuta was breathing heavily, rich mouthfuls of beautiful, magically ensconced oxygen while hanging upside down. She held tightly to the hem of his shirt.

“Let me down,” she said softly, a few seconds after.

They were out. Observing the great big hole in the elliptical structure, the lamps strobed a few more times before going fully out. The gleaming tungsten was completely untouched. Behind the sole, gigantic chamber containing the prison system, she could see the shimmering silver of the Proxima Centauri b.

Chapter Text

Barely aware of them docking against the side of Quill’s ship, Bowie, she looked at Rocket.
“The Kree?”
“Splattered by that Skrull.”
She nodded, swallowing her saliva. It tasted like iron. She looked at her bleeding arm, wincing slightly.

“It’s red.”
Loki spoke. He was so eerily quiet she almost forgot he was there.
“What?”
The doors opened and Quill let them in.
“Your blood is red.”

The silencing darkness of the orbital ring was gone, replaced by a warm LED light of Quill’s ship, along with some music, stench of fried food and tobacco smoke. It was as comforting as it was highly nauseating, so she evaded his no doubt rib-crushing hug and ran straight to the bathroom, to puke her tension out. It wasn’t much. Just a handful of stewy chunks and a piece of a nut.
There was a knock on the doors.
“Tea?”
“Yes. Give me a minute.”
“Ten seconds. I can’t handle this alone.”
She splashed some water on her face, before rubbing it on the back of her neck and sighing. Wiping the blood off, she washed her arm with soap and tore off some of the gauze from the cabinet to wrap the gash up tightly.

She clicked on the lock and the doors slid back with a zing, allowing voices in. Breathing in and closing her eyes for a few seconds, she stepped out to face everyone farther down the cabin.
Quill was wide eyed, listening to Rocket explaining the situation of him being a complete and utter asshat and disagreeing very loudly, while Loki was leaning against the chair, his arms crossed over his chest, looking straight at her.
“Who are you?”

Rocket and Quill stopped talking and looked at Loki. She tightened her lips and raised her eyebrow.
“None of your business. Where can we drop you off?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s none of your business, Frode.”
He lowered his eyes to her bandaged shoulder, before raising his chin up.
“It is.”
“Would the outer Messier 31 be alright with you?” She asked with a hint of sarcasm, referring to the junk belt outside Andromeda, the spiralling magnetic system of recycling for the galaxy.
“Tea, we can’t have liabilities. We’ll deal with him later.”
“Deal with me?!” Loki frowned, looking at Rocket, who outspread his short arms in defence.
“Settle down, whitey, I won’t kill you. You just continue helping us on our ship, and we’ll all merrily part ways like the peaceful lot that we are.”
“My ship,” Quill mumbled, looking at Rocket.
“How do you know we can trust him? He is a sorcerer,” Teuta asked, before Loki retorted.
“You trusted Drachiri.”
“Who is Drachiri?” Quill asked.
“Drachiri was a friend.” Teuta looked down at the floor. “He needn’t have died. He was there only because Ronan killed his entire family, and he chased him down. Didn’t even succeed doing that. Drachiri was an honourable man.”
“Poor sap,” Rocket added quietly.

There was a brief silence. Quill didn’t understand a word, Loki kept staring daggers at Teuta, Rocket was fumbling with the controls on the mainframe.
“Tea. Is that your name? No, Teuta.”
“You don’t know her name?” Quill asked. “So you two have had no physical relations?” He continued, his eyebrows going up as his grin widened hopefully. Teuta rolled her eyes, shaking her head. Loki looked him up and down haughtily. Rocket chuckled, mumbling “not yet”.
“Not yet?” Quill asked. “How do you not know her name?”
“Because she personified someone else, it seems. Teuta, who are you?”
She opened her palms to the skies.
“Jesus Christ, if I hear that question one more time, I will throw you out, I swear.”
“You can fucking try, liar,” Loki spat back at her.
“You do not use that tone of voice with me on my ship!” She raised a finger at him.
“Hey, it’s MY SHIP! But seriously, Teuta, I don’t mind the look, I kinda dig it; we could roleplay, like, me being a castaway on a Kylosian beach and you nurse me back to health by-“
Loki and Teuta spoke at the same time:
“You’re not seriously having relations with this-“
“Quill, shut the fuck up and go get me some food-“
Rocket laughed loudly now before everyone continued, incomprehensibly:
“Oh brother, fine ass relations-“
“I’m not your brother, lowly-“
“QUILL! GO. GET. ME. SOME. FOOD!”
“…lowly human.”

“Lowly human?!” She repeated Loki’s words in her deepest shade of voice, straightening up her spine after Quill turned around, slapping both of his palms against his thighs.
Loki’s mouth opened, he closed his eyes, and then smirked, figuring it all out.
“Oh. Right. You’re human.”

“Happy now?”
“Yes. So,” he cleared his throat, obviously preparing to continue talking, something which Teuta feared, and rightly so, for it was one of his enduring flaws. (Or qualities, depending on how husky his tone would get the closer he’d no doubt be to her ears.) So she started walking down the hallway, away from him. He followed her. “Teuta, the human posing as a Kylosian. Inside Tungsten A. Not for thievery; while no doubt being a thief. An Unseen, furthermore. A spy also, of course. I presume the disguise and the choice of imprisonment, no doubt a willing one, was to evade something quite dangerous? Who did you anger, Tea?”
“Teuta. Only Rocket calls me Tea.”
“Very well. It’s more mellifluous anyway. Who did you anger, Teuta?”
She opened a storage chest, pulling clothes out, finding her baggy T-shirt and tights. She frowned for a second (Quill kept them. They’re even washed.), before shaking her head and looking back at Loki. Her mouth stopped mid-way because there he was, leaning his long arms against the top of the door frame, handsomely looming above her with his head cocked sideways; a strand of hair loosened from his braid and elegantly falling down his dirty, sexy face.
She swallowed a rising sensation back down her throat.
“Do you mind?” She lifted the T-shirt, displaying she’s about to change clothes. He lowered his green irises down her neck right on her chest.
“I’ve seen those already. Have you something against extending the tattoos to your nipples, my little human?” He said, his voice a warm, mellowing shade. Her cheeks were warm now.
“Get out.” She looked away. He chuckled, turning around and silently walking back out.

“Captain, where are we going?” Loki asked Rocket, observing the star system they were passing by.
“I am the captain. This is my ship,” Quill said, his arms crossed, with a determined look beneath his stiff eyebrows.
“Relax, your highness. He’s trying to wind you up,” Rocket said to Quill, cleaning his leaf blower/launcher-in-making. He was growing quite attached to the item. Rocket liked collecting jailbreak memorabilia and elevating them into useful things. Loki darted a look at Quill, his eyebrow raised, waiting for a reply to his previous question.
“Samarqand,” The latter replied.
“Shangri-La,” Rocket said.
“Why do we insist on calling them Midgardian names?”
“Because we’re from Earth, and as one of the founding nations we’re entitled to our fair claim of the liberties of the federation,” Teuta’s voice replied from behind them. She walked in wearing the garb of her people: fuzzy, worn-out cotton tights and a washed-out grey band T shirt (though you couldn’t say which band, for she wore it upside down). Loki might have taken to guessing which band offended the taste of this woman, but he was more caught by the irony of the logo of said band caressing the curve of her breasts, without a bra over them. Obviously; she had pokies. It was distracting.
“Yup.” Quill cleared his throat. “Remember Samarqand, Teuta? That hotel, with the Xandarian love nest? I was thinking that we should go there again.”
“You can’t go there again, lover boy. She is banned.”
“Why?” Loki asked, after finishing looking over Quill with pure, oozing disgust.

Teuta spoke. “None of your business. Besides, we’re not going there. We’re going to Shangri-La.”
“Yeah, the Xandarian love nest, man. Teuta, you should wear the straps again, it’s seared in my mind forever. And with the power metal in the background… Good times.”
“Quill, shut up. We’re not going there.”
“We’ll need to refuel; lover boy wasted two tanks.”
“Is that why everything reeks of fried fish and whores?” Teuta glared at Quill. He shook his head apologetically.
“I was lonely, I missed you. I needed some warmth to get me through the cold Centaurian night.”
“Right. Of course, you did.”
“Seriously, asshat, crack a window open when you land somewhere. It’s a pigsty,” Rocket said, scrunching up his tiny nose. “Anyway, the closest is the mining cave of PA-99-N2. Catchy name, I know. You’d have thought all of this bickering over who’s going to name what after their precious myths would extend to all the planets, but no. Blood barons like their fancy gardens in fancy capitals, and leave the dumpster moons to slaves and unlucky schmucks.”
There was silence. Nobody could argue with Rocket about this.

Everyone was quite exhausted. Rocket took the first two hours of the shift and went straight to bed later on. Quill waited for Teuta to arrive and hugged her. She smiled.
“I never thanked you. Sorry. Thank you for saving my life,” She said softly. Quill looked at her, his eyes lit by the faraway stars in the darkness of the now unlit cockpit and caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.
“I couldn’t live in a universe without you in it.”
She smiled, looking down.
“I missed you,” He whispered, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes.
“You don’t find me disgusting like this?”
“I could never find you disgusting,” he said, his voice hushed, directed at her ear. He started leaning forward, touching her lips with his. She broke the kiss.
“Sorry… I can’t. I… I’ve been through a lot. I just need some space. It’s not you.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not saying it to get away. I just need to breathe. And to get out of this skin as soon as possible.”
Quill winked at her, determined not to show his hurt, and turned around, going to his bed. She sighed and curled on the chair, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. The universe looked even more enormous like this, with the lights out and no larger planets nearby. There was the endlessness of it which always provided an anchor for the chaos inside an individual, and the soothing pull of every molecule within a body recognising its brethren in the vast-verse.

She was busy tracing a spiral on her collar bone and getting lost in the peace when she felt a presence behind her. It had to be him. There was something about him which made her nerves flare up, whether it was in annoyance and a desire to find a safe space away from his incessant babbling; the need to find out what was that strange pull of every arousing ounce of attention; or sometimes this, the tranquil, serene awareness of his power. Awareness which felt much like this blanket on her body; like safety and comfort. Was it the idea that it was easier to be around a friendly powerful face in case of danger? Most likely, Teuta thought. I’d much rather be on his good side.

“You have two hours of sleep until your shift.” She spoke, not turning around.
“I do not require much rest.”
He sat on the chair next to her, looking out the window. She turned her head and observed the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“Can’t sleep?”
He smiled briefly.
“No. I don’t feel safe.”
“You have nothing to fear from Rocket. Or Quill. He talks much, but he is a puppy.”
“How about you?”
He turned his head and bore his eyes into her. She inhaled, thinking how much they looked like glass right now, one of those precious glass vases brought in from Venezia to adorn the palace of Shangri-La. They were captivating. She pulled her blanket up to her neck to hide even more and smiled lightly at him.
“I am very dangerous. One wrong move and I’ll kick you out without a parachute.”
He was silent, thinking about something, the shadow of his previous smile vanished for a moment.
“What is the price?”
“Of what?”
“Of the magic needed to transform you.”
“How did you know it was magic?”
“Because I tested my own on you, and you passed. You were real to anyone interested in finding that out.”
Teuta said nothing for a while. His beauty was alarming. The bluish glow of the entire cabin rested on his glossy hair, making it look sleek and soft to the touch. She longed to touch it.
“Do they teach magic willingly on Asgard?”
“Gullveig did. May I?”
He extended his hand gallantly towards her. She pulled her arm out of the blanket and cautiously placed it into his. Deftly rolling her sleeve all the way to her shoulder, he gently dragged his elegant fingers down her skin, evoking goosebumps, which ended in a breeze of warmth across her sex. She almost let out a moan.
He politely seemed to not notice and continued tracing the patterns.
“Very elaborate. She was always a magician with details. I do remember her preparing the mixture, but I had no idea who it was for.”
“You were there before me? Why?”
He stopped caressing her.
“I had… an ailment.”
“And what was your price?”
“It wasn’t treated.”
“Gullveig failed?”
“No… I failed.”
He leaned down and kissed the tips of her fingers. Looking directly into her eyes, he continued planting excruciatingly slow kisses up every curve of the red tattoos. Teuta bit her lip, her mind fogging up with desire.
“What was the ailment?”
“I will never tell you.”
She smiled, now trying to pull her arm away. He let her, retreating to his seat and licking his lips enticingly.
There was a strange feeling brimming at the very edges of the hollow in Loki’s chest. Like a fluttering, but insistent prickle around his lungs. She seemed to cause this more often than not, and he found himself chasing it as he chased her. He wanted to know what her true eyes looked like, instead of this burning red which reminded him of his ancestors. And what her hair looked like when freed from this coal-like glued mess. And just what shade of inviting pink her sex was, and did it taste as good as he imagined it would…
“What are you thinking about?”
“About what fleshy colour your cunt is when out of this disguise.”
A pang throughout her womb made her breath hitch. Flushed with red like my face would be right now. Teuta’s playful mind wanted her to strip out of her leggings to show him one of the two places the dye hasn’t touched. She wanted to find out what other shades of tasty green she’d see in his eyes.
“So, you know Gullveig from your home world.”
“Yes.”
“And she taught you magic.”
They passed a red giant, and the glow made her eyelashes seem enormous. There was a faint realisation in his mind, that of wanting to share something with this woman. He frowned at himself.
“Along with my mother.”
“Your mother is a sorceress?”
“A witch.”
Teuta leaned forward, pulled in by what seemed an incredible story.
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, thank the Nine. For centuries to come yet.”
Teuta thought about this for a second.
“Are they common there, the witches?”
“Well, yes and no. They like their disguises. One might argue they need them, considering my father’s usual distrust of their intentions. And indeed, the powers.”
“How did he allow you to learn magic, then?”
“Mother insisted. She said I had the gift, naturally. It’s nice when somebody answers your questions with a straightforward, simple answer, is it not, Teuta?”
She chuckled.
“Alright. I haven’t been playing fair.”
“You have been in hiding, it is unsurprising. Now, what is the price for this magic?”
“I have to return it to her.”
“Oh.” Loki spoke. Oooh, Loki thought. There was a number of ways to do that. This kept getting more interesting.
“Oh indeed. I’m not going to tell you how. It’s between me and Gullveig.”
“Understandable.” Maybe she’ll take her skin off? Maybe via another ritual? Was there ever an upside-down magical pattern stripping? Retracting the ink? Perhaps another witch would be so kind to serve as sacrifice? Gullveig could no doubt use her wiles for such a cause. Would no doubt.
“Give me your hand. I want to memorise the patterns.”
“What makes you think you’ll get to see me without them?”
“I am quite sure we will cross paths again, little human.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. You’re too delicious not to,” he said, licking a line up her wrist. Teuta slouched, unwillingly, her entire womb clamping down on nothing, wanting something. She pushed his head away gently and shed her blanket, rising from the chair to place each of her legs around his and straddle him. He slithered his palms around her back and under her shirt, sliding her closer to him.
“Besides, I owe you,” he said, massaging her back in gentle little circles.
“You do. I saved you.”
“And I owe Rocket.”
“M-hm,” she said, relaxing even more and feeling both aroused and sleepy. She lowered her head and nuzzled his neck. His eyelids fluttered as his head lolled backward. What is she doing to him? He wanted to get fully soaked in her maddening attention, allow her to plaster her whole soft body against him and sleep like that, glued to her naked, warm skin.

“Truth or dare?” He uttered, his voice husky, vibrating through her. She darted her tongue out and tasted the salt of his skin. Even barely washed as they were on this cheap ship, the taste made her mouth water. He let out a soft, soft sound of pleasure.
“Hmm?” She asked, drunken on this dream of the night and an Asgardian promise of lust.
“Truth or dare?” He gently pushed her away to look at her. He knew she’ll choose the truth. The only dare he could envision wholly right now would consist of a plea to try to get his cock hard. Every other pulse point of pleasure was flickering and oozing arousal, but his flaccid cock laid there, dead. If there was anyone who could do it, he thought it must be her, with her face nuzzled against it, her full lips giving it tiny, pecking kisses.
“Truth.” She cleared her throat, cocking her head at him.

“And this truth is my debt owed to you. I rarely come clean. I rarely engage and come with opened hands, with not much to hide. It is invariably beaten out of me; by punches, by schemes shredded, by heeded plans subverted. Always with a sense of shame and lingering doubt.”
She squinted at him.
“But perhaps… this ounce of possible regret might be just that: an ounce. Light.” He muttered to himself. “Teuta, my name is not Frode.”
“Hmm? What is your name, then?” She cocked her head to the other side. “Who are you?”
“The name is Loki, most commonly. I am… many things.”

Teuta’s lips slightly opened as her jaw dropped down.
“No.”
“What?”
“Tell me that’s a very popular name on Asgard.”
“Could be, haven’t been there awhile.”

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply, for five seconds. Then she inhaled for five seconds, and exhaled for five seconds.

“What are you doing?”
“Controlling my breathing to control everything else.”
“You know of me?”
“I do. I have to go to bed. Your shift is up.”
She got off him and took her blanket, ignoring his confusion and walking steadily back to the tiny room to sleep. He instinctively knew not to follow her. 

Knocked out by pure, unrefined denial, Teuta got good few hours of sleep.
But the first few seconds of a possibly blissful awakening were ruined by voices coming farther up the ship, from the cockpit.
Trying not to think too hard about who awaited her there, she got up and washed her face, before joining them.
“Quill, do you have any coffee?”
They stopped talking. Quill had an innocently questioning expression on his face. Rocket was holding a lever midway down with pure amusement oozing out of his sparkling little eyes.
Loki was standing straight, with his hands clasped elegantly in front of him.
“Does she know?” Rocket asked, a small smirk forming on his face.
“Does she know what?” Teuta said, looking out the window. “That the Asgardian here is a liar? Moreover, a god of lies? Yes, she knows. Quill, do you have any coffee?”

Everybody was silent. Loki was looking at her carefully, eager to understand what this reaction was. He didn’t encounter it too often. Amusement, desire, fear, hatred – all were quite common, but this… obviously meticulous compartmentalising of something was not.
“He told you?” Rocket asked, now pulling the lever all the way down, releasing something out. “Last night, I suppose.”
“I… felt like I had to. So, there it is. That’s who you’ve saved.”
“Why is that important?” Quill cut in. “You’re not Frode, you’re Loki. Umm, okay? Whatever? Why are we talking about this?”
“Oh, Quill, my sweet summer child. I love you sometimes.” Rocket chuckled.
“Rocket, quit it. You’re right, Quill, it’s not important. He won’t be around for much longer anyway.”
She turned her head and looked at Loki, who frowned lightly at the dejected look in her eyes.

“Have I done something to you? I have lived over six hundred years; it is possible that I do not remember it. I am truly sorry if I had. I’ve been… young.”
“No. We’ve never met before.” Her eyebrows went up and down again, displaying an overlooked thought. “And now we have. Let’s just leave it at that. Quill, coffee?”
Rocket was shaking his head with a grin.
“Will somebody explain to me what is going on?!” Quill suddenly yelled out. Loki was baffled to be agreeing with this bulky idiot.
“No. It’s none of your business. What should be your business is getting me some coffee, because if I have to ask one more time, I will drag the veriest tip of my dagger carefully down the midline of your shaft and slice it like an overcooked sausage.” She squinted at Quill. He nodded, shivering slightly and turning around to go fetch the drink. He knew that Teuta was not very prudish about her sexuality. He wasn’t, either, so he couldn’t have held it against her (although he’d like to: fierce, wildly unique women were always his greatest kryptonite), and he knew Rocket mentioned her bedding gods more than once, but it seems she just met this weird guy; she couldn’t have already slept with him, could she?

Rocket waited for Quill to get to a safe distance to cut through the palpable silence between Loki and Teuta.
“You don’t know, do you?” He asked Loki.
“Know what? I clearly don’t know anything, it seems.”
“Oh man, Tea, lately I’m close to believing the hoodoo about curses and blessings, and even though it's scary, I gotta say, this is highly entertaining.”
“Rocket.”
“He’ll find out eventually. Look at that hungry expression, that’s a little kitten starving for secrets beyond his comprehension.”
“I’m not a kit-“ Loki was offended, and stared the furry raccoon down haughtily, before being interrupted.
“Yeah, you are. She is as well. You’ll claw each other down trying to find them out. Word to the wise, Mischief: she has actual slots up her knucklebones for actual steel claws. The moment we hit Shangri-La, she’ll fetch all of her shiny little gadgets and then not even I will be able to help you if you anger her,” Rocket said, leaning over to Loki. Teuta crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at Rocket.
“I am a god. No humans can fight me.”
“Hah!” Teuta snorted, turning around to play with a random box in her hands, which needed anything to try to keep her calm.
“Hah what? You think you can?”
“I know I can. Not my first time.” She grinned at him.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Nope, I don’t. And you won’t get me to. I’ve dealt with your ilk more than once, I know all of your deviousness.”
“My ilk?”
“Tricksters,” Rocket added.
Loki’s eyebrow raised very, very high up.
“I don’t know who you think you’ve had the chance of engaging with, but I assure you, Teuta, it wasn’t me or any of my ilk.”
“Oh she engaged, alright,” Rocket guffawed. Loki’s other eyebrow joined his first one soaring for the sky.
“Quit it. It’s none of his business. As I said, Loki, thank you for being honest. That is nice of you. We’ll just do this thing. Refuel, then Andromeda, and that’s it.”
Loki nodded. She extended her hand for a handshake, trying very hard to be civil with this god in front of her, knowing that if she budges even a millimetre of steeled will, she’ll be on her knees, begging for his attention. Probably in the form of unzipping his trousers to see his gorgeous face melt with lust.
He observed her for a few seconds, trying to determine her thoughts behind those fake red eyes. He needed to see how she truly looked before succeeding at something like that. And he would. Loki felt his own will steel up at the thought of uncovering her undoubtedly interesting past. Other tricksters? Which ones?
He couldn’t resist it. A titillating sensation of wanting to play, of wanting to tease, crawled at the edges of his sanity, bending it to his nature.
Loki took her hand and turned it around, placing a very wet kiss on the back of it, while looking straight into her eyes. She shivered for a moment.

“Like flies to shit,” Rocket whispered to himself, staring at them. He watched his friend try so very hard to build up her existence as a series of evolutionary steps. Try to better herself… only to fail miserably every time. Well, fail in the sense of not being able to fulfil what she set out on. And that was stupid. How could somebody like her hope to maintain a steady apartment in one of the lesser cities; have a steady income; a steady daily rhythm? She was too hungry for adventures. Too thirsty for mysteries and above all, yearning for chaos which, when she’d fuck her rhythm up, would almost always throw her off balance so hard she’d have to climb where she previously walked and stutter where she previously fluently talked. Literally. She’d try to be peaceful for days on end, only to have something or someone visit her and she’d end up drunk as a skunk, in a bar fight, talking like a complete idiot.
Quill got to her last time. She was in Samarqand, buying a fern in a ceramic pot for her rented room, wanting to live there. Rocket explained the offer for the job thoroughly; she refused it. He asked again. She said no and went to get one of those facial treatment by the lesser A’askavariian witches which claimed to be cleansing the pores of the mysterious subopaque acne; so imperceptible to the eye only a fleeting shadow (“There! How can you not see it?”) could be seen, and only by the witches. Rocket waited patiently, and, upon entering her clinically cleaned room, he frowned.

There it was on the table.
A perfect wooden bowl with exactly five perfect arbutus berries. Teuta winced upon seeing it. Rocket sighed. It wasn’t weird or mystical as it might seem at first: it was left there by a patron (owner, really) of the smallest bit of Greece on Earth, called Arkadia (now covering half the planet), who was the ambassador in the Universal arcadia: the entirety of Andromedan galaxy. And especially Shangri-La. A dutiful handsome messenger with weird wing-shaped spurs on his boots and an especially esteemed Lord of Trade, he was no stranger to these parts. He might’ve hopped down to Samarqand to perhaps set up a new route for selling fruit; hence his own, perfect arbutus berries. He had probably thought it sweet to send his former ladylove, his smartest concubine, his ablest homegirl a little pre-gift.
Teuta placed her fern in a ceramic pot down, pulled out her bastard sword from her collection (appropriate) and started cutting the plant down to its root. And that’s the prettiest part. The rest of it Rocket did not want to remember, because she ended up with Quill and his galpals in a room at the Persian Pleasure House, wearing a leather ensemble that made even the owner’s personal whores blush, before burning it down to the ground. And stealing said owner’s personal Damascan steel sword to melt it into her claw implants. She was not welcome in Samarqand after that.

Teuta went about doing anything else to distract herself. Trying to clean Quill’s ship was truly a very good, detailed distraction which soon turned to a real activity that merited its own concentration, because she had approached him holding a pair of silky panties hanging on the tip of a pencil.
“Whose are these?”
“Umm… yours?”
“No they’re not. My ass is clearly bigger than this. Have you been hosting orgies?”
“Without you? Never!”
She chuckled at his innocent looking face. That boy was a danger to himself. She’d always had a soft spot for Quill and his straightforward attention. In another life, he could have been a very loving boyfriend. If one was into such things. Being loved freely, that is.
“Oh, Quill. I did miss you,” She said, sighing. Five months of tension in her lungs was free to dissipate now, right after getting rid of that green-eyed danger back there.
“The orgies, huh? Well, we can throw one if you want, my beautiful Teuta.”
He straightened up, displaying his broad, strong arms. The ones that used to lift her up in the moments of carefree desire. She smiled. Wasn’t it easier? To just let go and let Quill lavish her with his attention, always so very grateful when she allowed him to. And if she hesitated a bit, the effort he’d put into satisfying her and making her feel as she was just an incredibly desirable woman, and not a human toy to be wrought and moulded whenever she, instead, let go and let a god (of mischief) have at her.
“Flattery did always get you places. It’s one of your strong suits.”
He stepped closer.
“I always feel like something is lost to me when you get away, Teuta. Nobody dances like you do. Remember that? Remember when we went down back home, to sunsets like nowhere else, and you let me treat you like the queen that you are? And we danced in that bathhouse on Peloponnese? Bowie, play Come on Eileen.”
The song started, making her chuckle as Quill threw both the pencil and the garment behind him and took her hand, spinning her around herself. He started singing the song badly, and she laughed harder, joining in the dance. Somewhere around “my thoughts verge on dirty”, he took her by her chin and planted a deep kiss on her lips. She breathed into him, feeling the stubble and the strong jaw. The skin pulled over his muscles was soft, filled with human tissue and human blood. When she pressed against him his breath showed deep weakness and determination. Tasting of booze and bad food, he squeezed her, clashing his teeth with hers. It was never very intoxicating, unless she was intoxicated.
She wanted marble in place of that soft skin, she wanted stone against her, a power so immense she knew that it could either kill her or make her come like she’s dying (same thing, really).
Once you fuck a god, it’s hard to go back.

She separated.
“I know this look in your eyes,” he said, his own eyes showing just a touch of moistness.
“It’s… this is not my skin. I’m enjoying this, I really am. And I wish I could be relaxed, but I need time. No, listen to me-“ She couldn’t bear this disappointment. Her heart ached. She hated herself in moments like these. “Listen to me. Quill. I… I need to shed this magic, and I need to get a few good nights of sleep, and I’ll be like new. But I cannot bear to be touched right now.” She started lying. She learned from the very best.

“I’m riddled with these tiny cramps and feel like something is crawling over me.” She faked a shudder, shaking out her hands. He observed it, his lips now tightening with sympathy.
“It’s making me very tired. I just… I need time. Like, physical distance from everyone until I get my body in order. Okay?”
Come on, Eileen, ta-loo-rye-aye kept blaring behind her, making her feel as if her lies had a rhythm to them.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I get it. Bowie, end song,” he ordered, and the AI turned if off. He sighed, scratching the back of his head.
“I’ll let you get back to it,” she said, softly, not even bothering to check what it was that he was doing before she walked in, deciding to go find that bottle of whatever it was she tasted on Quill’s tongue.

Chapter Text

Rocket was making sure the coordinates for landing were good, when he heard a clank and an oww behind him. Teuta walked into the cockpit carrying a half empty bottle of the hideously strong elf rum, stumbling.

“Ahh, here we go again. Long time no see, dipsomaniac.”
“My sweet little raccoon.” She hugged him from behind and kissed the top of his head. “Comb through, you’re shedding.”
He slapped her petting hand away.

“Might want to ease up, we are about to land in the middle of JMC site. You should be concentrated in front of anyone able to wield a holo-saw, little human,” said a voice behind her, from the shadows. A honeyed, purring voice of that… that… hot god. He stepped out in front of her. She displayed the bottle for him.
“Want some?”
He smirked and took a swig.
“Are you both mentally compromised?” Rocket said. Teuta chuckled, looking at a stray drop on the edge of Loki’s lip, with half a mind to lick it off immediately. He did it instead, slowly, looking straight into her eyes. She took the bottle back.
“No, you’re not coming. I’m taking Quill. You two are going to go to the woods and hunt for something. There’s barely any meat on this junk of a ship.”
“Fine by me,” Loki said, not quite able to hide edges of his lips twitching with the idea of getting her alone. And this drunk.
“I hope I don’t regret this,” Rocket muttered to himself.
“He’ll do it. I’m taking a nice little swim in that lake.” She pointed to a pond on the outskirts of the dark forest a bit farther off from the mining station.

It was a light, velvety night where they landed. The deep red of the somewhat rusted construction of the mining station glistened in the dark, a few lights signalling a night shift for the unlucky ones. She couldn’t see Quill anymore, and she didn’t care. Strapping a backpack to her back, and taking her daggers, she walked to her bed for a moment, pulling out the seven vials of the Kreean blood, and attaching them to the inside of her waistband, sighing with that bit of sadness untouched by the booze. The Kree didn’t deserve to die like that either.

When she got out, Rocket snatched the bottle from her hand. She didn’t protest, wanting to get on with her plan. Loki was leaning on the side of the ship, one leg over the other.
“Shall we?” He gallantly opened a palm toward the treeline. Rocket muttered something again and retreated to the ship to fetch Quill.

After five minutes of treading through the tall grass, Teuta spoke.
“I meant what I said. I’m not hunting for anything. I need a bath.”
“Alright, let’s take a bath.”
“Me. Alone. Without you. The next time I see you, I want you to have finished this task successfully, young man, and then you’ll wait for me to finish. And I might have a little surprise for you. But only, and I mean it, only if you can be a good boy and do all of your chores.”
She wagged her finger in front of him. He grinned.
“A surprise?”
“M-hm.”
“Alright.”
She nodded, before ducking a blade of grass and disappearing in the distance. Very soon, he appeared on her right.
“You do realise I was never a very good boy?”
“Alas.”
“What is the surprise?”
“You do realise I’ve worked through my fair share of bad boys?”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
She stopped, looking at him.
“Loki.”
He felt it deep in his bones, the way she said his name. Unreserved, just drunk enough for her guarded way of going about him to loosen.

…It did cross her mind. More than once. He indeed was a sorcerer, and the way he looked hungry for excitement meant he would happily host the magic she owed to Gullveig. Perhaps there even was a way she could convince him to give it back when the time arrived. But Teuta couldn’t do it – she’d rather cut off her fingers than be indebted to a God of Mischief. Na-ah.

“Loki, I mean it. I need, like, twenty minutes to myself.” She sighed, stepping closer to him. “I feel like my mind is melting and I… I still have nightmares about that detention and you don’t know this, but my skin is itching and burning.” She swallowed a loud chunk of lying fear. “There are some extremely hard times awaiting me, and I just need a little moment of quiet time to wash myself in peace. Please, Loki. Just that one moment.”

He observed her, the flicker in her red eyes, the moving of her throat and the way she fisted her shivering fingers. He sighed, seeing how weary she was. Just like back in the prison, he felt the instinctual reaction to help her.

“Alright. Twenty minutes,” he nodded, and sauntered off towards the forest. She scrunched up her nose for a second, quite proud of herself, and ran towards the pond with a smirk.

She couldn’t hear any tiny animals. The bullrush and duckweeds loomed above the water at just enough distance to make it seem a little fairy bath. Trodden into the wet ground, yellowish grass was soft under her bare feet. She stripped off completely, observing her patterns one last time.

Taking the vials, she unscrewed them one by one and poured the content into the lake. The blood was thick, and the last few drops dragged on forever before touching the water and seeming to dissolve.
She knew better: millions of tiny little intelligences scoured the swamp molecules for signs of powerful life.

Stretching towards the sky for a second, she stepped in and closed her eyes. It started at her feet. A slimy awareness of something akin to a tiny cold compress plastered itself to a swirl on her legs. It was very cold, but soothing. The sensation continued snaking its way around her thighs and over the curve of her ass, delightfully skipping the curve of her mons. With a silent giggle she now almost regretted not having been tattooed there, if only to have the idea of pleasing herself with the nanodevices. Wicked.

She opened her eyes, to view the tiny lights creeping up her body. Well, luminescence of the intelligences drawing the ability from the bioluminescent plankton, to help power the movement.
Reversed and in direct contrast from the way it was applied, her markings kept dissipating. Where there was immense pain, here was soothing relief; where there had been elaborate care of the needle, here was a swift motion of erasing it.
It was slow, but the more enchanting aspects of it kept Teuta from registering how much time had passed. It was well over twenty minutes.
Loki, not usually one for complying with requests, did it diligently for once in his life. But his patience was wearing thin, so he was away from her for EXACTLY that long, down to the tiniest measurable time unit known only to Asgardians; and appeared on the grassy coast.

And what he encountered there made him sorry for obeying her request of twenty minutes, for he wanted to observe the glorious process from its inception to its ending. Mesmerized by the scintillating lights enveloping her lightening skin, he wasn’t so focused on her body as he was on the transference of magic to the invisible devices absorbing it. It reeked of power. It scented the air with pure potential unlike any he had seen for well over a century.
And starved and emptied as he was of his magic, it was making him ravenous. He knew he needed to recharge, that his own supply left him with just enough juice to power a very, very small miracle. He’d been saving it for days, hoping beyond hope this little crew would take him anywhere near one of the larger plants; an elm, an oak, even an ancient bristlecone pine would do, if well connected with the roots of the world tree.
A witch, a sorceress… a mere practitioner would do also, provided that they handed over the potential willingly. Which they always did. Magic was energy in its pure form, never birthed and never dissipating, only channelled through the many beings able to wield it. So it wasn’t really theft, Loki reasoned. It was borrowing. Placing from one shelf to the upper one. If the person wasn’t tall enough to reach it, they could have simply leaned over and taken it from any of the lower ones.

Nanodevices had the intelligence, but not the will to give it over. So it wasn’t really taking anything. Not even borrowing. It was simply picking it up, Loki reasoned thusly, licking his lips. All she had to was turn her back on it.

Stripping out of his horrible clothes, he waited. After a time of heavy sighs and tiny moans (oh he heard it, alright) coming out of her, he could see her lower back peaking out of the still water, growing pinker, to the actual colour of her skin. A desire to see her as she truly looked won over the desire to get the magic for this moment.
He stepped carefully in behind her, just in time as she lowered herself down beneath the surface, and slowly rose back up: he could see a wet mess of golden tresses, plastered wet against her, growing closer to him. She was like a bewitching water nymph, a mermaid about to offer bodily riches for a soul (an impotent man might offer his ahead of turn, even), a sea wench taken over by lust (possibly, hopefully).

“I couldn’t have guessed you were blonde.”
“Oh damn, I was hoping to have dried by the time you arrived,” she said, ignoring a flinch when he surprised her, and turned around, removing a strand of her hair from her face. His smart half-smile slightly wore off now. She had blue eyes, the colour somehow seeming stronger than it would in this darkness, for he was seeing it for the first time. Her skin was light. Not as light as his, but by the Nine, it was clear and unmarked by those squiggly red lines and so, so smooth – he thought, uncharacteristically lost for the more poetic description by the sheer delight with which he already caressed down her arm and up the other one. She chuckled.
“What is it? A little human got your tongue?”
It made sense now. Those full lips in their reddish shade – now that was not a trick of the seeing it for the first time: those looked juicy and overtly red as an inside of a cherry if you let it ripen to a throat squeezing sweetness. Loki abruptly leaned down and bit her lower one, salivating.
She let out a softest little protest before sharing the impossibly succulent kiss. Comparison to juicy fruit flooded Loki’s imagination as he fashioned ideas of the taste of her, almost too toothsome and tantalizing. He feared wrapping his arms about her wet skin, feared the goosebumps and the craving and the letting go. And it almost won over, but she plunged her fingers into the tangles on the back of his head and plastered her body against his, gasping for air. Oh no, she would be getting none, he decided, and shoved his tongue inside the wetness of her mouth.

“Oh you have got to be shitting me!”
Quill’s voice broke through. They both flinched now, turning around.
“Qui- I-“
“This dude? This skeletal, slimy, oozing Norse creeper? Seriously?! Quill I cannot bear to be touched right now!”
“Quill, I am drunk, I just-“
“Just what? Lied to my fucking face? After everything? Of course you’re drunk, you’re always drunk!”
“And you always took every ounce of advantage of that!”
Teuta darted to the edge of the pond, leaving Loki behind, obviously intent on having this bothersome argument with this bulky idiot. They were some sort of an item. He saw them kissing. It was bland and awkward. Was she, as well? Was this an illusion of something that could hold his attention? Most likely. After all, now the magic of her is gone.

…Some of the lies he told himself were intentional, some born out of desperation of roughly seven of his states: hunger, desire without the means to indulge in it, actual hunger, thirst, pain, boiling need for any form of power, and a clean but riveting need for more magical potential. Which was right here, tickling his half-submerged naked body. Teuta was in the front, flailing her own shapely naked body yelling at the numbskulled other human; Quill was his name, a boring form of oxygen waste which could get it up, unlike Loki, and had gotten it up, and had been inside her. The whole thing was nauseating, really, unlike- unlike this beautiful, bountiful, reachable well of ridiculously coercing undercurrent.
He sucked it in slowly, and by the time realisation reached the thinnest coating of his morale it was already too far gone. He couldn’t stop now, as the life and the dynamism of it deluged his body.

“Fuck you too, asshole!” Teuta yelled at Quill’s back, and he displayed a middle finger, not looking at her as he was walking away.
She took a few moments to calm down, reaching for her clothes on the ground. Loki walked slowly out.
There was an entirely new sheen to his hair, and the dark circles around his eyes were gone, but she didn’t notice it.
“He’s right. I am a cunt,” she said, sitting down as she finished pulling on her clothes, before running her hands through her wet hair, and rubbing her eyes with her fingers.
“Don’t fret too much. He’ll come back.”
There was something sinister about his voice, and now she looked at him. Oh damn his beauty, and this presence of his. She smiled slightly, unwillingly.
“So? How do I look?” She got up, dusting her palms and looking into the green of his eyes. “Whew, ok, don’t get up so fast, Teuta. My head’s spinning.” She took a step closer to him.
“You are exquisite, Teuta. Truly exquisite.” He lifted an arm lazily and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
In the distance, she thought she heard a roaring start of an engine, but it was a dull notion compared to this god in front of her.
“I’ll deal with him later, I guess. Hey, Loki?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you actually manage to hunt for anything?”
“Yes. I’ve left the rabbits next to your backpack. They’re secured. There is enough coal around here to work something out. Do you have water with you?”
“Of course. Why?” She frowned.
“And your daggers, little human?”
“Loki?” She shook her head, now seeing a flicker of poison peering at her from very far inside his mind.
“You truly are beautiful, and I am honoured that you showed me this, Teuta. This is no lie.”
“Loki?” She said, caution deepening her voice. With the spiral of the rum still lingering in the back of her mind, where saner thoughts might have cleared it up, she tried very hard to see where this was leading to.
“Hmm,” he hummed, darting a look to his left, where she now recognised Bowie’s lights rising above the horizon.
“What the fuck?! Quill! Quill!” She ran a few steps in that direction, seeing the spaceship slowly, but surely rising up to the orbit of the planet. “Jesus Christ! Quill! Rocket! You can’t leave us here! What the fuck is happening?” She kept running, trying somehow, drunkenly and desperately, to hop up in the air and catch up with it. After a few minutes of yelling repeatedly, she turned around and ran back to the pond.

“Loki? Where are you? Loki?”
All the report of what she was saying would be futile at this point, because that repeated string of names and prepositions of locations slowly but surely reminded her of the reason she came here in the first place. She stumbled and fell face down, eating a mouthful of disgusting swamp mud, and then continued crawling towards the trodden grass. The vials glistened in the darkness, see-through and empty. She scrambled on to the waterline, leaning down and seeing the deep black, hollow and very, very ordinary. No nanodevices. No magic. No nothing. Just a dead blade of grass floating about peacefully.
She hit it with her fist, before observing the ripples steadying themselves quietly, as if without a care in the world. When they were perfectly stilled, she could see the outline of her silhouette surrounded by the faint moonlight above her.

Crawling back to her backpack, she sat down, hugging her knees through her damp leggings, now feeling as if the mellow night of this unmoving planet was cold and bitter, making her already wet body and hair feel like ice. The stench of the rabbits’ blood flooded her nostrils, and she leaned to the side, retching; vomiting the rum and the stew and her hopes and sanity, followed by a shot glass-sized slimy spit of pure yellow bile.

*

Four hours later:

Barely any effort at all was spent magically convincing the supervisor of the JMC to let him have one of the quick ships which the coordinators, seniors, managers, larger area managers, planet managers, planet coordinators, cluster planet managers, cluster planet coordinators, area directors and area senior directors used to quickly reach every and any possible station, all expenses paid. (Nobody in the Andromedan galaxy suspected a thing when they adapted Midgardian company hierarchy, except for the actual workers. When a first galley of criminals arrived from that small blue planet, some of them committed suicide upon seeing the list of managers that were to manage them. A few decades later, more and more workers of all DNA permutations started to understand why. Curiously, none of the managers and the positions above them seemed to figure out  the cause behind this weird behaviour.) Anyway, he had taken the ship, flew it smoothly to Shangri-La and docked in one of the smaller harbours, barely supervised at this hour. Even a few days in that metal jail was enough to make a creature of refined comfort such as Loki long for the softness of Shangrian air, with its balmy streets filled with carefree nightgoers, its clubs, bars and restaurants just packed enough to look promising; and its hotels inviting and comfortable.
Twas not much effort either to convince the manager of Tehran Interversal to allow him access to one of the finer suits, their Midgard-themed lavish room.
When he took a nice, long, bubbly bath, and upon pulling on a velvety robe, Loki stood in the middle of the room, on a round, soft rug, and frowned. Hands on his hips, he stared at the rug: it was a depiction of the continents of the Earth. Midgard. “Earth” was what Teuta called it.

Teuta. The human he left for worse back on that shit mining planet.

Shaking his head to loosen his silken curls, he threw that thought aside and sprawled himself on the bed, turning on the TV: which was apparently an encompassing multiversal method of forgetting about worries of the day, whether for the vertebrates with several limbs, single-celled (a really smart cell) creatures, or, you know, any of the managers. Loki couldn’t really tell what the show was about, why the hostess was laughing, or was the audience real or not because he couldn’t concentrate. He kept thinking about that girl: wondering was she thirsty. Maybe she was so drunk she didn’t bring water. And that pond didn’t look very clean. Maybe she wasn’t as strong without her implants so she couldn’t fight off several hungry JMC workers who wanted to either eat her of fuck her.

He found himself licking the inside of his upper teeth and blinking repeatedly, entirely unaware of spinning a hotel pen between his fingers. He hated this feeling: scruple activation. He fucking hated it.
What if that idiot Quill didn’t come back for her?
And what if, Norns forbid, he did? He could have convinced her he could be her comfort. He’d have picked her off the ground and sheltered her from crying (when the screaming stopped, he heard her sob far behind him). A few days of sleep and she probably willingly pulled his disgusting body down on hers and allowed him inside herself.

Goddamn it.

The TV show ended. Credits were rolling down the holographic screen, and a quick little interjecting commercial came on: it was a hair care product, claiming something wild like being able to make growth faster if placed underneath an infrared light. As if.

Loki shook his head again, dismissing his conscience and turned off the light. A feathery quilt felt like heaven over his supple, clean skin. Perfectly warm, hair already dry, he batted his perfect coal eyelashes down and wanted to drift off finally. A final little sigh of comfort was heard from him.

And another one.

And another one.

Goddamn it.

Loki threw the quilt off himself, jumped out of the bed, and, cursing in detailed Asgardian, started pulling on the stolen clothes: wool trousers, a cashmere jumper and a pair of suede boots. It would’ve made a beautiful image if he hadn’t been slamming it on himself, stretching the fabric, his hair flying about unseemly and getting caught in the collar of the jumper.

He grabbed the key card and darted out of the hotel, not bothering to greet the eight-limbed purple receptionist. Knowing he shouldn’t waste any more magic, he took to walking through the streets, kicking stray papers out of the way, and trying to chase away this feeling. More soon than he wished to, he was in front of the amarillo neon sign advertising remedies and instant healing.
He knocked twice. Rolling his eyes, he raised his knuckles to the wood and started knocking in a familiar sequence of taps. Before he finished, the doors flung open. They could only open from the inside.

“Enter, idiot!”
He sighed and walked in, closing the doors behind him.
“Gullveig,” he greeted, nodding his head once.
“Ahh. Sooner than expected. Nice.”
“I have no idea why you were expecting me, I’ve no debt to you.”
“Not yet, in any case. That herbal soap in the Tehran is always bothering my lungs, so, don’t mind if I sneeze more than once.”
“It’s artisan and handmade. But you wouldn’t recognise luxury if it bit your scrawny ass.”
She got off her chaise, removing the blanket from her patient bed and preparing it. He frowned.
“I don’t have any ailments that I need taking care of.”
“I doubt your wonderful cock started working. She couldn’t have gotten through to you this soon. Despite those tits. Now lie down.”
“I am not here about my cock. Not unless you have a better solution than last time. And I am tempted to ask who are you referring to, because if it’s Una-Rogg, she’s dead.”
“Una-Rogg is better off dead. But you are here because you’re afraid your newest crush might be also. NO, shut up for a second. I know it all. You’re here because you know that you should be storming back to save her from impending danger, and you would love it if it was truly impending, because then she’d need saving and she might look at you with those lustful blue eyes and beg you to have her. And you’re still too cocky and too much of a coward to do that. So you’re here instead, trying to see if I know anything about it all. About the status of her breathing. Which I won’t tell you.”
Loki pursed his lips, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the floor.
“You’re wrong. I am here to return the magic I stole from her. It’s somehow poisonous.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes, it is. You probably fucked up the ratios and the quality of ingredients.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have. Because I cannot control it and I cannot feed off it, it’s leaving me bland and dissatisfied. Perhaps even the nanodevices left a touch of something a little off to it, because I cannot concentrate on anything. Which I should. I am free and safe.”
Gullveig chuckled, shaking her head at him.
“You know, sometimes I am afraid of what would happen if you were to put even a measly twenty percent of your actual intelligence into truly understanding yourself. So thank you, Loki, my dear boy. Thank you for assuring me that day is so very much ahead of our time. What a load of truly mind-altering bullshit from an embodiment of a deity.”
“Gullveig…” His voice rose. He didn’t have to listen to her insults. Usually making for a chirpy altercation, now he wasn’t nearly rested enough for that.
“Lie down.”
This time, he listened to her, removing his clothes and closing his eyes to avoid her nauseating stare.
She kept pulling the strands from him with painful little pinches and skin twists.
“Also, if there is another way of curing my impotency, now would be a good time to do it.”
He said, ignoring a particularly sharp pinch.
“There’s nothing to cure.”
He opened his eyes, meeting hers.
“It doesn’t work. I’ve tried everything. That means it’s broken. I need to fix it. You can fix things. Fix this.”
“To paraphrase: there’s nothing to fix anymore. You’ve done it.”
“But I didn’t get the needle.”
“You didn’t?” She was so surprised she stopped her actions and asked a question. Loki leaned on his elbows to glare at her.
“No, obviously. Una-Rogg is dead, I already told you this.”
“Hmm. Unexpected, but alright. Nothing surprising. It’s even more dull than I thought this whole thing would be.” She muttered to herself. “Lie back down, I’m almost done.”
Loki could feel a release: he was a few pounds lighter. Ethereally, that is: when one can feel the weight of the worry curl up into nothingness. This should set him straight.

Gullveig walked away for a moment, in which he rose, sitting on the bed and calming his dizzy mind down.
“Here, idiot boy. Here’s your magic.”
She offered him a pitcher of clear water, surely filled to the brim with his own potential, his very own powerful concocted neutrino network dissolved in spring water. He gulped every drop, and it made its way down to his feet, leaving a shimmering sensation which would soon stop. In about a few hours. And it would take all the nasty conscience from him, surely.

Gullveig sat on a chair next to him.
“I take it her debt is settled now.” He spoke after a while, twisting the pitcher in his large hands.
“Mhm. Except for the pin. But there will be time for that, unfortunately.”
“And you won’t explain this to me.”
“No, because you’d be tempted to do that in her stead, as well.”
“How do you know?”
Smack. Loki didn’t even blink as a light trail of blood traced his otherwise immaculate cheek.
“Alright. Well, you should tell her this debt is settled, anyway.”
“Of course.”
“Gullveig. Tell her.”
“If she is alive to hear it. And if I feel like it.”
He sighed, his next words coming out with certain lowering-from-a-status-of-a-god difficulty.
“Gullveig, you must tell her, please. She has to be alive.”
“Calm down, dear boy. Just go get some sleep, and eat a plate of something nutritious. You’re skin and bones.”
She smiled at him. It took him back to his childhood, to whenever he was truly troubled, she would calm him down. But it would have to get really desperately painful for it to happen. Was it? He thought he was simply slightly worried. And fine, sure, it showed on his sallow face, but he wasn’t that worried, was he?

Going straight back to his hotel room, he undressed and laid down under the quilt. The shimmering sensation in his bones finally calmed down, but the feelings of guilt still didn’t go away as he slowly succumbed to sleep.

Chapter Text

Four months later:

Teuta had a number of blackouts, something that prevented her from piecing together all that took place between then and now: then being the moment after the last sniffle snuffed out and the last tear shed for her situation; and now being this moment in which she was laying in the foaming, boiling bath full of orange oil and patchouli in the lavish room of the Tehran Interversal.

Anyhoo, this she did remember:

She stopped crying, got up from the damp ground by the pond and grabbed the flannel shirt she had in her backpack, putting it on to try to protect herself at least a little bit from the foggy night. Reaching the station and exchanging the meat for the jacket of one of the workers, she was surprised by a message somebody seemed to have for her. It was from Rocket: Sorry, Tea, something came up. This erases your debt of one million units for the Broker. Don’t let the Trickster wind you up. Take what you need from him.
There was a golden ring attached to the message. She figured Rocket gave something else to the workers to keep them from stealing that ring, and wondered what it was.
The ring was exchanged for a train ticket. You know, the trains for workers, who were worthy of only a cramped carriage and no AC, unlike their outranking managers.
Upon arriving at the harbour, she buttoned her jacket all the way to her throat to keep from the blasting winds at the edge of space and stole a wallet from one of the passerby gentlemen. That contained enough money to rent a room in a cheap motel. The sheets were barely washed, the nightstand had greasy rings on it, and the rug in the middle of the room was best avoided with bare feet.
A couple of bets in the bar across the motel earned her the first bottle of metallic red wine that felt like a good thing to drink at that moment. Knocked out, she slept a day and a half, until the humanoid maid kicked her out.
The harbour felt much like the ones on Earth do – wet stone and frayed ropes, fishy odour of both the mariners and the passengers. Sneaking her way onto the ship, she hid in the luggage area and ate  the stolen sandwich.

There was absolutely no way in hell she’d go back to Shangri-la, not with what she owed to the witch, nope.

Rather, she went to Ephesus, on the other side of the planet. As far away as possible while still somewhere familiar enough. There she contacted an old companion of hers, another rogue Kree who used her skills for a few particularly shady thefts, and asked for help. Well, she called in her debt – she’d pulled the blue-skinned girl out of a hole on a burning ship once; and now got herself a new set of steel claws and her long missed mirrored lenses. Not of the highest quality, but they would do.
Now sober enough, she stared at the mirror in the small bathroom of a local pub and opened her right eye with her finger. A grey, lentil sized blob of steel slicked inside her eye socket and attached itself to the microscopic wire behind the optic nerve. It burned slightly, and she winced, but repeated the process with her left eye.
Blinking a couple of times, she activated the lens: rolling her eyes all the way around, very slowly, she felt the familiar coldness of the steel pulling over her eyeball completely, before being resized to fit her pupils. It changed her eye colour slightly, making them seem more greyish. All in all, it took the night to fall completely for them to reveal their use: she had perfect eyesight in pure darkness.
The higher quality ones provided zooming in when necessary, during the day it blocked the extra sunlight, and upon a particularly dangerous occasion, it served to clear any possibly distracting lights or colours. Even the glistening of an enemy’s blade.

The claws were just that – claws. Metal, silvery, sharp, protruding out of the distal interphalangeal joints of her fingers at a demanding twitch. She had had her surgery at the age of fourteen, the skin of her hands interwoven with tissue that allowed constant healing. All of the Unseen had had it, no matter their field of occupation. (There were a number of ballads sung around the galaxy bars that mentioned useless hands and wearing sunglasses at night to both see and cut through the heart of a heartbroken individual that was swindled over by some of her colleagues.)
They were quite simple, unlike the lenses and the other implants she had inserts for (more about them on another occasion), but they required extensive training to use. Decades of martial training. Comprehensive training. The kind that makes you move like the wind and slice like… wind, also. When it’s cold and it feels like a slice of ice over your face, in any case.

Pushing the rogue few strands of hair from her forehead back into the cap which hid the rest of it, she stretched her fingers a few times and went back to sit at the bar. If you ignored the cyborg bartender, and the octopus sitting at the edge of the bar, it might have seemed a good old joint back on Earth, especially considering the music playing, paid for by Teuta herself, was an old hit called Hell’s Comin’ With me. Which it was. Eventually. At least for that bastard.
She adjusted her butt on the stool and sighed, sipping on the watered-down beer. If you wanted better stuff, you had to go to Shangri-La. Nope.

She mulled over the decision to call the latest him a bastard.
Hermes was definitely a cad, for the old-timey sake and the feel of it being, as incredibly painful and atrocious it was, still an ancient thing. Something she did manage to get over, mostly. Like, eighty-nine percent of it. He couldn’t make her cry anymore. That cad. Yup, that had a good ring to it.
Veles could have only been a pure monster. No two ways about it. Somebody that ravages you to that extent can only be a complete monster. Even the mere memory of him caused her heart to shrivel and clench so hard she choked on her beer.
Loki… fucking hell. Bastard. Fucking thieving little smirking bastard... It didn’t sit quite right. She might change it. Right after she stops coughing – seriously, she tried inhaling slowly and holding it back, but it caused a burp and an acidic little lick of beer to jump back in her mouth.
And then something tapped her back to help.
And then tapped it stronger, and she spat out on the bartop. A cyborg immediately zzzzed over to clean it up. Turning around, Teuta wiped her lips with the back of her hand:
“Than- Jesus Christ...”
Facing her was a very gentle smile on an incredibly attractive face, surrounded by a woven halo of gleaming dark red hair. Teuta kept blinking at the woman, lost for words. This was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her ninety years in this universe. (…Yes, ninety. The implants and the surgeries the Unseen undergo are quite elaborate. Often allowing for up to six centuries of living, if one is wise and balances the good old work-rest routine. They rarely do. The aging process is very thoroughly delayed, and begins within the cavity of the body: a thirty-year-old looking woman could often have, say, decaying kidneys.)
“Jesus Christ? You’re Midgardian? Oh, that silly scamp, I haven’t heard about him in ages!” She chuckled. Well, snickered lovelily. Teuta cleared her throat and regained some of her lost balance.
“Umm, khm, yeah, yeah I am. I do prefer calling it Earth. Thank you. Sorry. Uhh.”
As we said, some of the lost balance. The dark-skinned beauty continued smiling ever so delightfully at her, brushing over the apparent awkwardness with elegant sympathy. Almost as if she encountered it every communicating moment of her life.
“Are you alright? You seemed to have been choking a moment ago.”
“Oh! Yeah! Beer, hah!” Teuta tried replying, pointing at the pitcher. Only, she pointed too hard, because she pushed it and it began falling over the counter. Her reflexes kicked in, and she saved about half of the remaining fluid and returned it to the bar top.
“You’re so very fast!” The woman seemed pleasantly surprised, shaking her head in elegant disbelief. Teuta felt it at that moment – there’s nothing quite like receiving what would normally seem a fake compliment from a woman who looked like a lustworthy angel. The edge of her lip pulled in a half-smirk, signalling regaining a bit of lost confidence.
“Well, we couldn’t have this horrid brown excuse for a drink stain that truly incredibly beautiful dress.” Teuta leaned forward, wiping a few drops from the hip of the woman, caressing her palm down the shimmering red silken fabric, looking straight into her eyes.
“Yes… I am sorry you’re now almost out of beer.”
“No matter. I feel like drinking red wine in any case. Would you join me?”
The woman smiled, her eyes sparkling with recognition. Teuta motioned towards the adjoining bar stool. She watched the miles long legs perch themselves on top of it, silently, as if she weighed a few grams of that falsely airy exhale before a first long moan when the orgasm starts building up.
“I am Lorelei. Thank you for the wine.”
“Oh, the pleasure is mine. Teuta.” She said, clinking the glasses together. Adjusting her legs to try to look at least a bit more presentable, they brushed their knees together. Both of them being quite tall seemed to be inconvenient in this position. Some other ones, it would prove to matter not much at all.

The bar started to get packed, and Teuta had to happily resort to leaning closer to Lorelei’s mouth to hear her, which allowed her to try to make an impression, possibly.
And the impression was made – however, this was not wholly a very good thing, for the simple reason that everybody else saw it as well. Including one of the hotel owners quite enamoured with Lorelei, and under a delusion that she belonged to him. So he went about raising hell to get the hobo away from her. Teuta was very offended; yes, her jeans were a faded black and torn at the knees, and the gigantic plaid flannel shirt she had on had seen better days, and indeed, the large beanie hiding her had frayed strands, but a hobo?
The sock in the jaw she received from him (without notice, even!) cleared her head just enough to realise the slight fear and deep disgust on Lorelei’s face, and that just wouldn’t do. She pushed him back and got up. Unfortunately, the man knocked over a table full of shots which awaited the six Skrull bounty hunters.
Now, there are a few things foreigners learn upon arriving at the very open Andromedan melting pot of races, one of which is: under no circumstances is anyone allowed to steal, push over, spill or break a bounty hunter’s drink. Those weirdos are full of hidden rage. They immediately pulled the man down on the floor and started beating on him. A chain reaction of broken glasses, broken jaws and machinery flying around almost destroyed the place. Luckily for Teuta, she had the added ego boost of both defending a hot woman and her paid playlist starting to play Slow by the The Reverend Horton Heat, which aided significantly in the few meaningful face kicks and claw marks, freeing a makeshift hallway used to allow Lorelei a way out of the mess.

Outside, they started running, Teuta pulling her elegant new friend down the damp dirty street. Several alleyways later, they stopped. Lorelei panted, her palms on her knees. Teuta caught her breath a lot faster and dabbed the dripping blood from her jawline and the left edge of her lip.
“Care to tell me what that was about?”
Lorelei rose, adjusting her hair and shaking her head.
“Oh, I needed a favour, he needed a favour. Somehow, he imagined that meant a relationship, or something to that- oh, your face!” She gasped, stepping closer to Teuta. The worry in her large honey eyes seemed delicious, so when her hand got within a grasping distance, Teuta grasped it and pulled her closer into a kiss.
The blood provided a catalyst for lust, and Teuta grabbed her hips, walking her backwards until the silky back of the dress was met with a wall.
“Gorgeous…” She uttered and continued biting her way down the swan-like neck, licking across the freely offered expanse of skin.
There were voices coming closer by the second. Teuta pulled her deeper into the unlit part of the street.
“We can’t stay here.”
“Come,” Lorelei spoke, pulling Teuta’s hand and making her run on.

They arrived at a hotel room, quite lavish and very, very lit. The caramel tones of Lorelei’s skin seemed to border on the bejewelled ones of the Tiger Eye Gemstone, Teuta noticed, upon tearing her eyes from the luxury of the room.
She kept sucking on her nicked lip, frowning lightly.
“Another hotel. A lot of favours with a lot of hotel owners, hmm?”
Lorelei didn’t answer, just kept smiling as she undid the elaborate knot of her dress, which then slid down to the floor, revealing a glistening, sloping expanse of the smoothest imaginable skin which looked like it would glide so perfectly easily against her wetness. She licked her lip, feeling it pulsing slightly with pain.
“Would you like me to explain now or later? How about later?” Lorelei asked cockily.
“Fine by me,” Teuta replied, curling her finger into an invitation. The dark-skinned beauty slithered closer, pulling at the beanie to reveal the blonde hair of her current conquest. She smiled delightfully, recognising the universal meaning of power in the lustrous length, and took to kissing that hurt lip like she could cure it by the attention alone.
Clothes were thrown off as the sweaty skin found way to moisten even more; shrill pleasure of being caressed with a tip of the finger down the midline of a nipple was loudly proclaimed, as was a shivering sensation of wide tongue rasping across the bare surface of a clit, the lips pulled backwards to allow the pointedness of the contact.
Teuta felt like her spine was oozing slowly down into a thickened, sweet fluid of pure lust when Lorelei’s impossibly elegant fingers grazed strongly against her G-spot. It was right, right, right there, and she didn’t change the pace by even a millisecond. One moment, she was enchanted by the airy quality of the woman, the other she found herself letting out the sweetest girly pants of prayer as the elegance turned into something dark and insistent, and the curves and crooks of Lorelei’s body suddenly became sharpened angles of bone-like toughness when she was fucking her earnestly. She felt her cunt pulsate deep, slow heartbeats she hasn’t felt in a while. The sloppy sounds were immaculately filthy, the bounce of Lorelei’s perfectly shapely breasts seemed profane when matched with them.
Teuta had fashioned herself quite the defender and the deliverer of this exchange all the way to the bed, but now; now she felt the strong thigh muscles of the woman squeezing the sides of her head as she placed that honest-to-god sopping cunt against her bloody lip. Smothered and almost choking, she dragged her tongue along those goosebumps covered labia, parting her and sucking in as if she was going to meet some enriched flow of oxygen there, and not the heady, musky taste of sex itself. Lorelei tasted like the animalistic pungency of one of those expensive, insane perfumes; like ambergris, and all those indolic components from her grimoires and her alchemy school classes which she could not recall, for her back tongue muscles were aching from how deep she tried to lodge it in the narrow hallway of Lorelei’s pussy. Rewarded with a series of low, song-like moans which reverberated around the room, Teuta’s eyes rolled backwards as her lenses dragged over her eyeballs, making them glow in the darkness, giving her a UV overview of the underside of Lorelei’s tits and her flat stomach. There was a scan of energy which implied a humanoid being, something denser than a human. That thick, Asgardian lump of life-energy shot down around the curve of her hips and started curdling and coagulating in the centre of her stomach. Teuta stopped breathing for a bit, only watching the orgasm-blizzard of multicoloured strands going off like fireworks. Her head started spinning wildly, and she was losing consciousness, now feeling the steel-like thigh muscles pressing painfully against her skull.
Lorelei let out a scream so high pitched it would’ve pierced through Teuta’s eardrums had they not been already compressed by her thighs, and it went off for quite a while. Teuta whimpered so weakly, so minorly compared to her lover, but it seemed to reach the ears of the dark-skinned goddess, for she extended her elegant arm backwards and grabbed the whole mound of Teuta’s sex, blasting some of the weird-sex magic (Teuta shall deal with it later) all the way through her. The asphyxiation brought about some of the most powerful, blissful, mind-numbing pleasure she had ever reached in this life, lasting for those few remaining seconds of consciousness… until she fully let go of it.

*

There was a sound of chewing. Teuta frowned. It was dark, and the air was fresh, scented with milky white linen-y wave of washed laundry. She scrunched up her nose, trying to determine the correct name for it… but she couldn’t. Then she realised she could just open her eyes. Oh.
So she opened them; seeing the light golden canopy of the otherwise crispy white bed. Lorelei was curled up, sitting next to her pillow, wrapped in a sheet and eating a pillowy dough of something.
Teuta cleared her throat.
“You’re awake!”
“M-hm,” the blonde girl replied, sitting up as well. These sheets are new, she noticed, still naked. Her hair was pulled into several different directions. Lorelei looked at her, perfectly radiant as before, and offered her the pastry, smiling gently.
“Water,” Teuta croaked, and her hand was soon met with a glass of cool, beautiful water. She gulped it down completely, before taking the pastry.
“Who are you?” She uttered, swallowing a bite of raspberry-tasting treat. Lorelei let out a sing-song chuckle.
“I suppose it would be rude not to tell you now, my delightful human.”
Hmm. Teuta didn’t care to be called a human in this fashion, as if she was a precious, fragile pet. The last one who called her that…

“I am Lorelei, as you know it, and I’m from Asgard, yes… And also, I am a… student of magic. Well, some of it, in any way. But I guess you’re asking about what I’ve done to you?”
Teuta nodded slowly.
“That would be a galdr, a ceremonial invocation of pleasure. I thought you deserved it,” she said, her eyes tiny slits as she smirked.
“Hmm. Sex magics and stuff.”
“Hahah! Yes, exactly. May I kiss you?”
Teuta’s eyebrow shot up sarcastically. She choked me with her thighs last night.

“M-hm,” was all it took, because Lorelei touched those shapely lips to her own, slicking them in a way which only begged adding a tongue to it. When they separated, she saw that amber light in her irises flicker at her. She smiled.
“I must say I feel very relaxed with you.” Lorelei suddenly spoke.
“Why?”
“You’re beautiful, Teuta. I’ve not… had anybody beautiful for a while.”
She looked away, chipping a tiny crumble off the pastry and playing with it.
“Is this about what took place in that bar last night?”
Lorelei sighed.
“We do what we must do, right?”
“I suppose. What did you do?”
“What I had to in order to survive.”
“Survive?” Teuta swept through the air with a hand flourish, displaying the luxury of the room. This seemed to hurt Lorelei, for her eyes received a hazy shade.
“Oh, no, no, come on.” Teuta placed the pastry down on the plate. “No, sorry. I apologise. Hey, beautiful, I don’t mean anything by it, alright?” She placed a finger under her chin and raised her face to meet her eyes.
“I’m not the one to judge. I am an Unseen, as you know it. I did shit half the galaxy would hang me for, alright?”
Lorelei let out a small smile. Teuta caressed her cheek with the backs of her fingers.
“It’s just that, did you dig a hole too deep to get out of?”
“No, I’ll be fine. I’m alone now,” she said solemnly, as if this was something she meditated upon. “And I will survive. Without her.”
“Without who? Do you want to talk about it?”

Lorelei got up, fetching a bottle of champagne. Teuta gulped down her pastry, her eyes roaming the gleaming figure of the naked body, already feeling her nether regions warming up.
“Might as well. What does it matter? What does it all matter, the secrecy, the ridiculousness of it all… the fucking lies. Disgusting, shitty, self-servient lies.”
That was the first profanity she uttered. And then she continued.
“To sum it all up: I broke connection with my sister. If you think my magic is powerful, you haven’t seen anything. Hers springs out of a well on Asgard, a hidden one, buried in our dirty house. But; I suspected it would make her leave her senses, and it did. I… couldn’t do it anymore. It was too much… too many bodies, too much filth, I…” She flailed her hands, and then fisted them at her temples, as if shielding herself.
“Hey… hey… you’re here, you’re not back there - wherever that is. Lorelei…” Teuta pulled on her hands, making her look at her.
“I know. But I never talk about this.”
“So, something’s rotten in the world of Asgard.” She tried making her smile.
“Hah… I wish it was only one place. But Amora kept travelling and going deeper, delving into that hideous power, and after a while, even she could not stop it. She didn’t want to. I couldn’t keep up with it, I didn’t want to, anyway.”
“Keep up with what?”
“Her incessant orgies. Drinking life force out of everything she encountered.”
Teuta frowned, confused. Lorelei continued, slowly explaining.
“Well, all magic can manipulate life force.”
“Yes.”
“Dealing with the life-giving aspects and the life-taking aspects, so to speak, can corrupt very easily. I’m afraid even gods aren’t equipped with the sanity it would take to control it. If there even is a way of controlling it. There probably isn’t…” Her voice trailed off.
“Isn’t that the case with magic in general?”
“Oh yes, of course, but there is something especially nasty about our kind. Something foul, prone to maddening cycles of craving and overindulging, gorging and being overly stuffed. Glutted. It’s disgusting.” She got up again, sighing something heavy out. This time, Teuta waited, silently, wanting to give her space.
“Don’t ask me the details. I can’t. I just cannot.”
“It’s okay.”
“I just feel like I have to tell someone at least something, because I’ll go mad if I don’t. I need a connection with the real world.”

“I’m real.”

“Yes, Teuta. You are.” Lorelei smiled again, and gave her a full, incredibly longing kiss. Teuta knew then that she should get away from her soon. She gulped and hid it.
“I understand, I truly do. I tend to live in denial, and I am aware of it. To an extent: because nobody can fully perceive themselves. Not even gods and ancient witches.” Teuta smiled, looking away for a moment. “But here is the thing: things are often simplest when it seems otherwise. You managed to get away from a form of living that didn’t suit you. Yes, I know, it’s more complicated than that, but you did it, beautiful. And you’re in this incredibly lavish room, eating… what are these, anyway?”
“Troian tebirkes with apricot jam. They’re called Troian because… well… they sneak in a secret.”
“What secret?”
“They’re loaded with carom seeds.”
Teuta kept blinking.
“…The aphrodisiac, when ground, helps to heighten arousal?”
She now smiled.
“And you thought I needed this because…?”
“Because I like it when you beg and that voice of yours lilts up and paints the ceiling with prayer.” Lorelei replied, finishing with a long lick up Teuta’s neck. That seemed to leave a firing trail down the pit of her stomach.
“You don’t really hold back, do you?”
“What’s the point, my little human?”
“Don’t call me that.” Teuta retreated a few inches. Lorelei squinted at her, trying to determine the cause of this reaction.
“Somebody whom I don’t really like right now called me that.”
“Oh. I take it they were a powerful being.”
“Indeed.”
“For half a second, I thought it might be my sister. She likes to subdue people, then drain them dry.” Lorelei frowned to herself.
“And do you do that?”
“No, no I don’t. I don’t need to. I’m a natural domme.”
Teuta smiled at this: yes, she really was.
“Back in Asgard, when we were still there, I couldn’t see it. But then, travelling… Ugh. Yeah.”
“No, it wasn’t your sister. I’ve never met her.”
“And what’s your story, morning glory? An Unseen fugitive?”
“What makes you think I’m a fugitive?”
Lorelei smirked in reply.
“Ahh. Didn’t graduate, thankfully. Burning down the administration office helped a lot in that regard. I have a… complicated relationship with my mother, seeing how she is an evil cunt. A lot worse than your sister, trust me. Trust me, Lorelei. And then I just kept trying to get away from her, in a gist. Met a few bad characters along the way.” Teuta sighed. “I was betrayed. More than once. In fact, that is my latest qualm. Somebody stole something belonging to me and I’ll have to get it back.”
“Who?”
Teuta now smiled mysteriously, shaking her head.
“Oh tell me!”
“I’m afraid I can’t. We don’t know each other that well, my dear seductress.”
Lorelei got closer to her, holding her by the waist and laying her softly down on the silken sheets. She let out a small, satisfied moan and started kissing Teuta’s neck, taking great care in nipping the exact spots she knew would soften her.
“You’re delicious…” She crooned, gathering her relaxed breasts in her elegant, dark fingers, before pinching her nipples. The smallest kiss on the very tips of them earned her a hitch in Teuta’s breath.
“I want to help you, Teuta. You saved me.” She kept speaking while planting burning kisses down her stomach, no doubt helped by her persuading magic; while speaking ever so softly: “You saved me, beautiful human, and you didn’t even know me. And that makes want to… just… lick the insides of that delightfully wet cunt of yours…”
“Fuck…” Teuta managed as she felt Lorelei’s fingers part her glued labia. “You don’t waste time, do you?” She chuckled, biting her lower lip.
“With someone like you? Never. You deserve to be worshipped by way of mind-numbing orgasms.”
“Like a goddess? No, thank you. I’ve had more… ugh, right there! …More than enough patience for gods…”
Lorelei’s head appeared in front of her face.
“So it was a god?”
Teuta laughed.
“You’re more wicked than you appear,” she said, knowing that fact would make her want Lorelei even more, and her clit twitched under those agile fingers.
“Mmm… indeed.” Lorelei licked the shell of her ear, making her eyes roll back, and laid on top of her, grazing their nipples together, which allowed for the radiating heat to reach Teuta’s spine. A brindle of pleasure travelled outwards, in concentric circles, enveloping her almost completely.
“Which god, precious?”
“One of yours, in fact…”

“Ahh, Loki.”
Teuta’s eyes shot open.
“How did you know?”
Lorelei chuckled, this time sinisterly.
“Who else would be foolish enough to deny themselves continual pleasure of this body of yours to achieve something most likely ridiculously dumb and then regret it later?”
“Wait, stop.” Teuta pushed her off. She obeyed, still smirking.
“You’ve assumed… I haven’t…” Teuta kept shaking her head. “He, he never had this body. He just tricked me. I… owed a few pounds of magic to Gulllveig for her help with hiding, and I was supposed to give it back to her, but he stole it.”
Lorelei’s eyes opened fully now in an amused expression.
“He didn’t try to kiss you?”
“He… did kiss me.”
“Really? Well then…” Lorelei swiped a finger across Teuta’s lips, hooking one down her lower one and pulled it slightly. “He’ll want more, trust me. Mmm…” She moaned, staring at her handiwork, before replacing her finger with her lips. Teuta barely resisted the slick protrusion of undoubtedly savoury magic, relishing how it reminded her of what she could expect repeated with her lower set of lips.
“You know… Loki?”
Lorelei pulled back, squinting at her again. The first uttering of his name changed Teuta’s voice. It hushed down, skidding delightfully over the “k”, and Lorelei could hear the watery sigh with the “I”, knowing that the human’s mind reeled with that name. She knew of the effect he had. No two ways about it. The sinewy god was sexy. Why should the human resist it?
“I do. We… hung out for some time. The three of us.” She took her glass of champagne and sipped on it. “Orgies, dear girl. Decades of them.”
Teuta gulped. Was he a part of this… depraved circle? Lorelei saw the gulp.
“Yes. He did indulge in a great deal of Amora’s horrid practices.” This caused her eyes to darken; there was a hint of trauma in them. “But… He left even sooner than me. Amora was furious. She… ah. She did nasty things in her anger. I’ve no idea where she is right now.”
“What about him? Do you know where he is?”
“No, I truly don’t. Nobody can find him. He could be back in Asgard, for all I know.”
“Oh.”
Lorelei circled the glass in front of Teuta’s face, with a mocking expression.
“You like him.”
“I do not.”
“You do, delicious human, you do. It’s okay. Who wouldn’t? Added the brood to the beauty, made for a concoction of desire surpassing even the admiration of how he can use that instrument of his… or, rather, combined it all together. What’s not to like?”
Teuta, lost in trying to compress a thought, didn’t even notice the fluid slipping down her stomach when Lorelei poured the champagne and then yanked her thighs apart, dragging the smooth surface of the stem of the glass to tease her clit. Teuta let out a groan, feeling her wetness pool at her entrance. Lorelei’s tongue lolled out, she panted like an animal in heat before diving straight into the sodden fleshy mess. She sucked on her clit and let out sounds of pleasure, which vibrated through Teuta’s body, before she grasped the sheets and clenched all of her muscles.
Lorelei knew Loki played a game of some sort with this girl. And by all the gods, she could see why. The thoughtful, wise eyes, the plumpy pouty lips, voice which hid things that would take decades to discover. Her curves, especially the ones raising the fleshy globes of her breasts and this one, which hid what seemed a nectar of Midgardian delights. One could suck her dry just to get a drop more. She wondered why would Loki skip the whole seduction only to get away with some lump of magic. He could get that anywhere. Unless… unless he wanted the chase. Seeing her reflexes, the agility and the determination in her eyes… he might just get it. He was, as always, a foolhardy idiot, hiding all he could do, trying so very hard to seem something less than he was. His loss, Lorelei reasoned, seeing how sexy Teuta looked when roused from a satisfying sleep, with a hushed voice, all messy and drows;: it takes a lot of effort not to just fuck her like an animal.
She refrained from voicing most of it, seeing as she’d started to feel quite a selfish need to redirect the girl’s thoughts away from that enticing mischief and back onto her, because if she wanted her this much, what would several days of indulging the full extent of that obvious care and sympathy Teuta reverted to immediately upon encountering sadness do? It would help tremendously in her healing.
What she did voice, though, was:
“Treacle… god fodder…”
“What?”
“Your syrupy, thick wetness, my little human.”
“Don’t call me like- AH!” Teuta yelled out when met with four fingers jamming into her and twisting hard. Lorelei fucked her like she wanted to possess her, and Teuta, like the good girl that she was, took it and took it, and oozed more, and her lovely cunt seemed to pulse in the rhythm of the fuck, and she whimpered like a teased little whore and asked for more. And she got it. Soon, her hips undulated as she rode out another shattering orgasm.

Teuta needed to get away.
After an indeterminable amount of time, of white dots blistering at her eyes, the ripples of lust colouring the air and making her mind get incredibly lost, she started regaining sense of time and space. The bed was covered with spilt drinks and crumbs of delicious food, Lorelei both covered her in and licked off what seemed several jars of flavourful jams. She also gave her eight love bites, red and swollen. Her pussy was sore and sensitive to the touch, and she had a massive headache from, obviously, the booze and the fucking. Lorelei sat in the armchair, staring at her and smoking a pipe, completely naked, her legs crossed elegantly.
Teuta rose, drinking several glasses of water.
“I’m guessing you want to get away from me.” Lorelei spoke, expressionless.
“It’s… not about getting away. You’re… you’re intoxicating, seductress. But… I owe Gullveig.”
“That you do.”
“And the sooner I settle that, the better. So I must track down…”
“Loki.”
“Yes.” Teuta searched around for her tattered clothes. They were washed and pressed; the holes patched up on the sleeves of her flannel shirt. Her underwear was scented, with soft, white floral scent. She smiled at Lorelei, who smiled back.
“I’m not an animal. The bathroom is over there.”
Teuta nodded, taking a very, very quick shower, and returning back to the room, which was still laden with the heady lustful air. It suddenly felt very, very awkward. Lorelei was dressed in a long velvet robe, staring out the window.
“This town is truly hideous. I think I’ll head on over to Shangri-La.” The cloudy sky drained some of the stronger colours in her complexion, making her look like a beautiful statue, made of porcelain whose colour has started fading away. The kind that makes your stomach clench with yearning to see how it looked like in its prime. “Would you… go with me? I have a feeling I can provide better accommodation than your current one.” She smiled very slightly.
Teuta finished dressing up and smiled back at her.
“I would, beautiful. I would love to. I would take you dancing and show you the absolute best hidden little snacks your rich ass never knew about. But I can’t. I have a debt to settle.
Otherwise, it would haunt me, and I… I wouldn’t be able to give you all. And you, my incredibly beautiful Lorelei, you deserve it all.” She stepped closer, caressing her face and adjusting loose strands from her wild halo of hair. Lorelei was expressionless for the longest time. “I’m sorry. Believe me, I am.”
“Not more than me, little human. No, allow me to call you that. Better get used to it.”
Teuta frowned for a moment.
“You’ll be hearing it a lot more. Hah,” Lorelei let out a small, sad chuckle. “I would love it if my instincts were wrong. But they are not.”
Not wanting to prolong the already awkward discussion which started to take a turn for the almost painful, because Teuta started to feel the pull of the angst behind the brown eyes, something she would desperately try to alleviate. There was a lasting quality in Lorelei; something to be found and cherished. Given a teensy bit more time, one might fall in love with her, even.
“I have to go.”
“Yes.”

Teuta turned around, pulling her cap on and pushing all of her hair underneath it. Lorelei didn’t look at her anymore. When she reached for the handle, she turned around one last time, hoping to do something to improve the mood of the dark-skinned seductress, but there was nothing. She still didn’t look at her.
“So long, beautiful Lorelei. I am sorry I couldn’t come with you.”
She exited and slowly closed the doors behind her.

Lorelei spoke into thin air, quietly, to no one in particular:
“Word of advice, Teuta: if you do manage to fix him, my sister will come after you.”

Teuta sighed upon exiting the lavish hotel onto the filthy street. Sunlight was guarded by a condensation of angry grey clouds. The buildings were wet, the cobblestones smeared with mud and various fluids, all in shrieking contrast with the gleaming white of the hotel. Lifting the collar of her shirt, more in comfort than because it could actually help with the incoming cold, Teuta walked on down the old town to the small rented room of hers.
When the scent and the heady inviting pull of Lorelei dissipated from her brain, she was left with only one thought: that of retrieving back what was lost.
Lorelei’s story of trying to find a way out of her own mess, of digging through the dirt to find a semblance of peace gave her a longing feeling of wanting the same. And that feeling required one thing now: settling the debt with Gullveig, for that witch would haunt her forever.
That meant finding Loki.
Still, the gloomy cluttered mess of Ephesus which she now observed through the smudged glass pane of her window made her wish to crawl back to that soft bed with Lorelei. Wasn’t that easier? She seemed to be a creature of endlessly interesting tales, of sheer delight. Teuta tapped her fingers against the wooden window sill, thinking about how much joy it would be to let go, to follow the seductress to Shangri-La, eat and fuck and dance and make love; for it did have the potential to become love, with the two of them being as burdened and hurt as they were. They might build a love nest, where they would be hidden and protected, and satiated. She knew Lorelei felt it, as well.
And Teuta also knew that this unresolved resentment in her mind would claw its way forward eventually, making her turn chaotic: the drinks wouldn’t be intoxicating and mellowing, they would become a hammering, thumping sensation of drowning out the resentment until she would grow violent enough to burn everything down.

And that gentle, elegant, pained woman deserved more.

She turned around, looking at her room: the nightstand had a half-empty bottle of rum on it. The bed was messy, covered with her clothes, her daggers, a few stray metal pieces of implants. The floor was clean; well, as clean as a broken wooden floor of a hobo room in a hobo town can be. Sitting down on the edge of the hard mattress, Teuta reached for the bottle without noticing it, only realising what she was doing when the creaking noise of the aluminium cap being unscrewed almost scared her. Frowning, she screwed it back on and placed it down on the nightstand, quickly standing up and reaching for her backpack. She stuffed it with clothes and sheathed blades, turning around to put more layers of clothes on her body, before decidedly heading for the doors.
She exited quickly, leaving the bottle of the rum behind.

Chapter Text

Gathering fake documents was easy, in this settlement-agreement universe, everybody constantly bustled about trying to level or even out something. There were people who owed Teuta. And now she owed even more than before, but walked out of the hideout in Samarqand with a new ID, new civilian clothes, and a new outlook; one that consisted of the beginning of a plan.
She stole some money, paid for the trip and the fees, and indeed, the insurance of travelling so far away. It was a romantic three-day Asgard sightseeing trip; with reservations at the local sweetheart hotel, and a bonus visit to the palace, viewing only, of course, the main entrance hall and the outside of the vast structure.

She had a bit of an issue applying for the couples’ retreat (the earliest tour heading there), but she burst into a beautifully faked sob at the agency, making all the darling women working there sorry for her fate: her boyfriend left her two days ago, and they were supposed to go together. Teuta convinced them, with her puffy face and her large, sad eyes, that she needed to go alone, to have a metaphorical ending of the relationship; she needed closure. And she had, in fact, always wanted to see Asgard, with or without him.
Carmen said that human men are pigs, and that she will surely, beautiful as she was, get a new beau in no time.
“And go, dear girl, have fun, taste some of the Asgardian mead-“ eyebrow wiggle, “because that can cure everything.”
Teuta smiled back at the woman and thanked her, clutching her documents to her chest.

She hid again, for this was Samarqand, and good at disguising as she learned to be, somebody might still have recognised her. She truly had no mettle to deal with their authorities at this point. It was a matter of time before they would find out the Centauri needed her imprisonment even more than they did.

Upon the elaborately faked olden ship, made of cheap metal and painted durable plastic, she sat down and observed the flurrying star systems. There was much to be said about faking traversing the universe back when everything was disconnected: when the realms were Nine, and Asgard ruled them all. Sipping on her Asgard Spritz (one of the three welcoming drinks available on the ship, the other two being barely digestible Dirty Marsini, created back on Mars by a ragtag band of complete idiots who considered themselves pioneers; and the Odin Colada, famous for the frozen Kahlua stain which was supposed to be representing the eye patch. The sheer stupidity of it was repulsive). The key word here was sipping, because it took Teuta a lot of effort to hold back. It was better to go a bit dry and annoyed by all the couples surrounding her, than to end up drunk as a skunk, and likely cause a lot of trouble.

In retrospect, she could have waited a for the next tour, one not so themed around young love. She received several bizarre offers by sentient octopods, invitations to join incoming orgies with all the lovers playing a role; a thousand requests to take photos of loving couples perched on the very far deck of the ship; and worst of all, a few of them eyed her with sympathy.

Still, there was not much she could do about it, considering the very guarded safety of Asgard was, well, very well guarded. She knew of the doorman, the mighty ancient Heimdall, and the stories of his power. Nobody walked through those doors uninvited. Hence, this ridiculous disguise.
There were very few depictions of the god, so when she was met with a colossal, seven foot long moving statue, she was slack-jawed and full of wonder, much like the other passengers.
His amber eyes glowed through the vast gilded sunset of the heavenly sphere. He didn’t look at anyone. He didn’t speak. Sheathing his sword back in that enormous centrepiece of the sphere, he remained in that position until the guide ushered the oohing and ahhing peoples onto the bridge.
And heavens upon heavens, that was a sight to behold: evermoving, clear, simple colours stretched into brindles and seemed as if they were flowing. Somehow, it felt almost wrong that the colours were so defined, so simple; but, Teuta reasoned – so was the rainbow.

Enduring the sight of the lake surrounding the old town, and walking through the bustling core of it, she felt honest sympathy for the extremely annoyed citizens. They seemed to be stopping frequently in their pace, almost in confusion, always with a firm jaw grit; there is nothing quite so infuriating as having your familiar streets defiled, your snug personal space invaded, and your feal town attacked by tourists, with their disregard for the rhythm of local living. After all, tourism was a Midgardian invention, and it failed to be accepted as acceptable even there.

She took the batteries out of the earpiece which served as a translating device into the All-Tongue (The guide was a Physarum polycephalum. If one didn’t grow up in the multicultural and multiracial connected universe, this was quite hard to accept. After all, slime mold did look like something to get rid of, and not something filling out paperwork for a job application; or, indeed, going on and on about the construction of the palace around the central room in which Odin celebrated his first victories), tossing them aside. She then stopped, looking to be tapping confusedly at the device containing the transmission, and slowly walked in another direction, seemingly not looking where she was going. Suddenly, she looked up, pretending to not recognise anything around herself. Embellished with a newest hip backpack of the Andromedan teens, and with a pink wig resembling that of the newest hip pop band back in Samarqand, she got further and further on into the maze of the hallways of the palace.

And then she encountered her first pair of Einherjar.
“Oh thank the Nine! Do you understand me? Tell me you understand me!” She spoke slowly, but very loudly, as if raising your voice and annoyingly enunciating words would magically make locals suddenly speak your language, while getting closer and closer to them.
“Stop right there.”
“Oh! Sorry! You can understand me! I’m lost!” She took a step closer. The first one raised his spear, not as a threat, but a warning. “My batteries are dead, and I wanted to find my group… Shit. Oh, I shouldn’t swear, right? This is, like, the palace of the gods?” She chuckled. The second soldier went around her, taking her by her arm. “Ouch, what is that for?!”
“Come on.”
And then it happened, as the first soldier walked into the zone of her reach. She disarmed the one behind her and whipped the surprisingly heavy spear to the front, clanking it against the expanse of the skin between the helm and the shoulder piece, momentarily cutting off his reflex, and then hit his face, knocking him down. The second guard met the same fate, and she placed the spear down, walking on.

One of the rare architectural magazines in the Andromeda, from a few decades earlier, described in detail the placement of the kingly and princely quarters on the famed palace of Asgard. In an elaborate piece studying the hand-woven, hand-carved, and hand-painted ornamentation, there was even an art noveau type of a blueprint (heavy use of artistic freedom was applied, as far as Teuta could see), which she now used to get around.
She was about to take a turn to the right, when she almost banged into another guard, this one without a helmet. Quite tall, and with a handsome, menacing face, he stopped her by holding her shoulders.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, girl!”
“Oh! I’m so sorry! Could you help me, please?” She huffed loudly, and started breathing heavily, to appear as if she was running – accentuating the very exposed curve of her cleavage in a very tight shirt. His eyes darted downwards, before smiling at her.
“I was with my group, and I lost them, I have no idea where I am…”
“You’re in the palace, young lady. Now, how old are you?”
“Umm, twenty-five.”
“Very good. Now that we have that out of the way, let me show you around. There are some nooks and crannies your, uhh, your guide surely won’t be mentioning.”
She chuckled.
“Oh this is amazing, really, really, it is. Back on Earth we don’t have anything like it!”
“A human, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Very good.”
“Wait, my shoelace is untied.” He looked down again, and she elbowed him, very, very hard, with her elbow, straight into his nose, breaking it. That caused a tiny chain reaction of bursting blood vessels, cutting off his oxygen. He clunked down to the floor, and she huffed for real this time, thinking how off her game she was; this was ridiculous. She had to hurry up - somebody would soon notice she was missing.
This time, she concentrated: hiding in the niches and slipping about unnoticed. Climbing on the precarious platform which connected the capitals of the ornamented pillars, she sneaked through some of the remaining hallways.
The jump down to the floor could’ve been more silent, in retrospect. And perhaps she could have not dropped her lockpicking helper. But her hands were shaking. She didn’t know what she expected. Him? Laying on the bed in his room, greeting her with a smile? A sharp blade against her throat the second the doors opened?

There was no going back. She needed to find him. If he wasn’t here, there would be something she could use. And if he was, in fact, perched on top of his princely bed, she’d jump him, shackling him with her tools, and force him to give the magic over. Yes. That was the plan. She stopped for a second, taking it to imagine him laying down on that bed, in a number of unnecessary details: how his gleaming hair would surround him, how his naked torso (of course) would heave with each breath, how his long, lean legs would be sprawled and relaxed.

Teuta opened the doors. Even the antechamber was impressive: ebony was simple, but so very luxurious. A heavy nightly black curtain which made a chiming sound when moved hid the way forward. She passed through it, feeling a very cold shiver going down her spine, momentarily halting her. She shook it off and carefully, fully silently, stepped forward and to the side, against a smooth, dark wall.
There was nobody there. Of course, it would have not been that easy. But it seemed nobody had been there for a very, very long time, because the shelving units had a thin, firm coating of dust on them. And there wasn’t a speck of it in the rest of the palace.
Antique gold-coloured walls, so very soothing, encapsulated the vast space: far too vast for a private room. Well, Loki was a prince, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising. The shelves nearest to her had various tiny statues on them, and she slid her gloved fingers around one and picked it up: it was a dragon. It seemed to have been made by a child, for the tail was not very elaborate. A very gifted child. Somehow, Teuta knew he’d made it. She put it down, walking on. Stacks upon stacks of books and tomes of sciences covered the wall closest to the large double windows on the southern side.
The bed was placed so that the person sleeping there could see the view. And my, the king-sized resting place looked incredibly, impossibly cozy. It was fully covered by what seemed an incredibly expensive emerald velvet blanket; and indeed, so many of the details were in that colour. A favourite, it seemed?
The chaise close to the library had a black silken throw over it. Teuta walked to view the large work desk in the adjoined room, whose doors were opened. There were files, and notebooks, all in the same handwriting: his. She picked up a piece of paper: it was an instruction for a potion. A quick skim over the ingredients told her this had something to do with turning the victim into a frog. She chuckled. Potions were always one of her favourite subjects. There was even a brief infatuation with becoming a witch back at her school – but not having the right calm mindset for wielding magic, she gave up, quickly enrolling into the more aggressive classes.
There were a lot of recipes, a lot of instructions, even something appearing to be a diary of trip. Trips across the Realms. She flitted through the pages, before closing the book down and running the tips of her fingers across the [embroidered] front of it. She sighed, looking out of the smaller window onto the bay, as this room also had a window. She had an urge to take off her clothes, lie down on that large bed and read through this detailed diary in his immaculate handwriting.
She shook her head, dismissing that thought, and started returning to his room to try to find any clues about his possible whereabouts.

Wanting to quickly inspect the misplaced books, she quickened her step – but stopped with her foot mid-air: there was a woman sitting on the edge of the bed. A tall, regal woman, in a blue dress, with long golden hair reaching her sandals. Teuta held her breath for a few seconds, her eyes gigantic: how did she not hear her? How?
“Sorry! Sorry! I’m lost!” She croaked, and knew she sounded very awkward.
“Indeed you are, little human.” The woman smiled.
“Umm, I’m with the tourist group, and I wandered off-“
“Across my hallways, beating down my Einherjar and walking into my son’s room? Now that is truly a very, very detailed wandering off.”
Teuta straightened her spine and gulped.
“I…”
“I won’t hurt you, if that’s what you fear. I’m Frigga, the Queen of Asgard.”
Teuta’s eyes widened again, and she threw herself on the floor.
“Your majesty! I am sorry! I did not know this was Loki’s room!”
The queen laughed heartily.
“I didn’t say which son.”
“Shit.” Teuta muttered to herself. What was happening to her? She hasn’t fucked up a sneaking mission this badly in… well, a decade.
“Stand up, come on. Now, what are you doing here?”
“Sightseeing?”
The queen grinned.
“Come, sit with me.” She motioned to the pair of armchairs. Teuta reluctantly walked and perched on the edge of one, never taking her eyes off the queen. She had a soft, ethereal beauty about her, always seeming to carry the smallest, endearing smile on her face. She didn’t look threatening. Yet.
“What are you doing here?”
Teuta weighed her options.
“I am looking for something that belongs to me.”
“And have you found it?”
“No, not yet.”
“Do you want to look around for it some more?”
“Uhh, no. It’s not here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because… your son has it with him. And he’s not here.”
The queen looked around the room.
“No, he is not. He has not been here a very long time. Do you know where he is?”
“I was kind of hoping you did?”
Frigga shook her head and smiled sadly.
“He has been evading mine and Heimdall’s eyes. But you haven’t. Heimdall saw you sneaking around.” The queen chuckled to herself. “He said the pink girl was up on the ceiling.”
Teuta frowned.
“He saw me there?”
“Do you not know who Heimdall is?”
“Your doorman?”
The queen laughed again.
“He is a Seer. And an all-seeing being. He can see you everywhere.”
Oh, Teuta thought. The brochures said nothing about that. She thought the stories about that ability were fancy metaphors to ensure obedience.
“Hmm. That was pretty stupid of me, then.”
“Indeed. It would have been a perfectly fine spying business otherwise, little Unseen.”
“I am not… Ok, I am a spy, but I wasn’t on any jobs here, Unseen or otherwise, Andromeda has no beef with your people.” Teuta spoke quickly, gesticulating, making sure she didn’t accidentally cause intergalactical war. Which, needless to say, would be truly a disastrous consequence of what was essentially a drinking mistake, even for her. The queen nodded all the while, and even in that tiny nod Teuta saw she was basically mocking her, holding back another laugh.
“I know. I can tell you have no ill intentions.”
Teuta’s eyebrows raised cynically. She most definitely had the illest of intentions. Towards her son, at least.
“Well, how?”
“You managed to step into this room. You managed to walk in so easily.”
“The lock is truly not that complicated. At this rate, anybody can barge into your son’s room.”
“No, it is not. Loki’s protections are of a different nature. That curtain you passed through with ease might’ve killed you. Quite a simple spell, one he managed to learn very young, back when he hid his stolen things here,” the queen winked at Teuta, “and never changed it. Anybody bearing a hostile intention towards him would either catch on fire or have a heart attack. Your poor human heart would not hold through it. Perhaps the enhancements from your versatile surgeries could have kept you living until our doctors picked you up.”
Teuta never lowered that eyebrow back down.
“Are you sure that spell is still working?”
“Oh yes, I felt the magic activating.”
“But I was in here for at least twenty minutes after that.”
“I wanted to see what you were going to do. How do you two know each other?”

Teuta puffed up her mouth, before exhaling an awkward breath.
“Pffft… just… From around. Places. Yeah.”
The queen chortled, seeming to be incredibly amused by this whole thing.
“So you’re friends with my son?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. He’s my pal, my buddy. We just had a little misunderstanding, and he stole – well, thinking on it now, he might have taken it by a complete, honest mistake – and I kinda need it back, so, do you have any possible clues as to where he might be? Even one, seemingly insignificant clue?”
The queen side-eyed her, as if she was teasing a little child.
“Buddy, hmm? Well, buddies do not steal things from one another. And,” she leaned closer to Teuta, wafting the air with the smell of perfectly red roses, motioning for her to come nearer. She did. “Between us, I do think my son’s playful nature makes him borrow things for a bit longer than necessary, angering his friends.”
Teuta nodded, not knowing how else to respond to this bizarre behaviour.
“And also,” The queen continued, “Loki never really got over that boyish whimsicality where he teases the people he likes the most.”
Teuta darted her eyes to both of her sides, trying very hard not to retort to that. Frigga tightened her lips, avoiding a full-on laugh. In a movement quicker than can be, Frigga snatched off her wig, and her hair fell around her shoulders.
“Ahh, that’s much more like it. Now, let me see your lenses.” With a flick of her wrist, the room was bathed in complete darkness, and Teuta’s eyeballs gleamed, covered completely with silver. “Could be better. We’ll deal with that. Give me your hands, child.”
Teuta was immobilised by fear now. This woman was a witch. A natural witch. Now she knew where Loki got it from – and now she knew she could not fight her in any case. And if she wanted to get away, she had to obey. So she placed her palms into Frigga’s opened ones. Just as the room turned bright again, the queen’s own eyes turned fully white, and her features froze for what seemed a long time. Teuta could not move; the gentle hold seemed to be a steeled grip. When the queen blinked again, her eyes regained their normal appearance. She frowned, the smile completely gone. Then her eyebrows contorted with pain, and she let out a quiet whine, looking to the floor and holding Teuta’s hands with sympathy.
“Oh, child… Oh sweet, darling Teuta.”
“How do you…”
“Forgive me. I took a look at your past, but I… I just wanted to see if you knew where my son is. Your… mother is-“
“No. I do not want to talk about my mother.” Teuta pulled her hands out of queen’s warm ones. She nodded.
“I understand.” There was a brief silence.

“Can your son do that, see the past?”
“Alas, no. This ability is inherited by blood.”
Teuta was confused.
“Loki was adopted. But I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it.” A shadow of a smile appeared on the queen’s face again. “There will be enough time for you two to share everything.”
Teuta ignored this weird idea of them sharing anything, and started asking questions.
“How much have you seen?”
“All of it.”
“Oh. So… you know how we met?”
“Yes, I do. Very unlucky. Thank you, on behalf of Asgard, for freeing my son. That crime he did not commit. The other ones you’ll surely find out about, he did. The one he was imprisoned for, definitely not. My son is not a murderer.”
“I believe you.”
“Believe him. Yes, yes, this is a high and mighty a thing to say about a God of lies; but earn his trust and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Erm. Your majesty, I do not mean to offend you by saying this… but… since you know about my past, you’ll probably understand why I do not want friendship with your son. I just need… well, now you know about it as well. I am indebted to Gullveig, and that is something I have to get off my chest. That is the only reason I am looking for him.”
“Yes, of course. Now, about your quest.”
“Do you have any, any, clues about where he is?”
“Oh, a number of places.” The queen tapped her lips with her finger. “He does have relatives on Jotunheimr.”
“Jotunheimr? Alright, I’ll go there. But wait, can’t Heimdall find him?”
The queen got up, her hair bouncing lightly as she turned to walk out of the room. Teuta got up and walked to the curtain, with the queen already opening the doors behind it. Teuta turned to look around room once more, her eyes landing on the shelving next to her. She grabbed the dragon she looked at before and slid it into the pocket of her cargo lime trousers, before passing through the curtain.
“Ahh. That little detail. No, no he cannot. Loki will have to explain that one by himself, since he tipped into a strain of magic that I know very little about. Clever boy. Now, follow me, we have to get you new implants.”
Teuta was taken aback by this, so she stood still for a few seconds, until the queen motioned with her hand to go after her, to hurry. She ran up to her.
“New implants?”
“Of course. Any friend of my son’s is a friend of mine.” The queen smirked at her. Teuta stopped walking.
“I… But you’ve seen my past with L-your son.”
“I have. I’ve seen it all.” Frigga looked at Teuta with wide eyes. She gulped, blushing. “I know you’re plotting to find him to retrieve your magic. As you should.”
“Yeah, but… What if there is resistance on his part?”
Frigga chuckled.
“You’re a clever girl. I am sure you can find a way to contradict his resistance.”
“But what-“
“Teuta, there’s no time to waste. After all, while you’ve been destroying yourself and… dallying, he could’ve gotten to the limits of the multiverse.”
“Multiverse?”
“Never mind that. What is important here is that you hurry up. Who knows where he might’ve taken your magic,” Frigga said, and then appeared to have had a thought to herself, and a fleeting smile washed over her already happy face. She pulled on Teuta’s hand as they went around a corner, into a more modest, darker hallway.
“Are we going to the soul forge? I’ve read about that.”
“No, child. I don’t want to alert anyone who’s not vital to our agreement.”
“Our agreement?” Teuta asked, entering a small chamber. The elaborate decorations of Asgardian fashion were not adorning the walls: they were blank, dark grey. Simple. There was a cabinet with see-through doors, containing surgical instruments. And a bed for patients, next to which was a cart on wheels.
“Wait here. Please don’t try to get away. Heimdall doesn’t like repeating himself.”
And with that, she was gone. Teuta sighed, looking around herself, opening the cabinet. It was a standard for the time, all the known instruments were there. And various equipment for surgeries. Nothing out of the ordinary. There was a faint yellowish magical whoosh in the air, and a cup of steaming fluid appeared on the cart. It was tea. By the smell of it, ginger and chamomile. Shrugging, Teuta took a hot sip and sat down, not knowing what to do. Reaching into her pocket, she took out the statuette of the dragon she stole from Loki’s room and observed it. It was a tiny alabaster thing, rather adorable, and she found herself smiling at it, when she heard steps approaching. Putting it back into her pocket, she stood up.
The queen was accompanied by a woman with a long, grey robe covering her whole body. And an elaborate silver lacquered mask covering her face. Teuta squinted at her.
“Lay down please. She is not going to hurt you; you have my word as a benevolent queen.” Frigga placed her hand on her heart. Teuta nodded, bowing her head slightly, and prepared to give information to the doctor, as it was necessary before every surgery so far.
“I… have had bypasses for connection. And, there is one vertebra which is made of tungsten, dwarven, not to be removed. I broke it when I was a child. Also, I’m allergic to those wolframic structures that non-humans weave bones with. Oh, I just sort of prefer liquid stretching of the lenses, it's so much more useful in a fight, and the mirrored effect is…” Teuta cleared her throat, now speaking more quietly, “much cooler.”
The queen smiled. The woman nodded.
“Yes, it’s very dramatic. But don’t worry, my personal doctor is a very knowable woman. And gentle.”
“Have you had children? Will you have them? What is that in your uterus?” The doctor raised a hand, and a soft white light flowed out of it as she floated it above Teuta’s whole body.
“Uhh, no. And no. I have standard bronze IUD’s with the blocking discharges. I don’t think it needs replacing any time soon.”
The doctor stopped.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you use blocking discharges? Those contain cadmium. You’re a human.”
“Umm, to block the hormones? I am a spy. I cannot have my senses meddled with by fluctuating emotional changes.”
“So, you don’t experience emotional changes?”
Teuta frowned.
“Well, of course I do. But these… bodily caused ones, I… they’re harder to control.”
The doctor looked at Frigga, who sighed and gently took Teuta’s hand.
“My darling girl, the ones who assured you that you cannot control your emotions because your hormones shift back and forth, they are… How do I say this… Full of shit.”
Teuta’s eyes widened for a second. The queen of Asgard uttered a dirty word.
“You are perfectly capable of running your life and your affairs just as you are. If you want to block your menstruation cycle, that is more than understandable in your line of work. But do not let anyone, and I do mean, anyone, tell you that you are unable to make decisions based on your hormonal fluctuation.”
“But our mentors said-“
“Your mentors were men.” She turned her head and looked at the doctor. “Every form of society, every single evolutionary step.” She kept shaking her head at the doctor, who loudly sighed. Teuta sighed also. This was too much information to process all at once. And she was really sleepy, on that nice cozy verge of letting go. And she did.

When she woke up, Frigga was next to her. The doctor wasn’t there. Teuta got up, cracking her neck, and then she lifted her hands to protract the claws, and was very, very pleasantly surprised. Those were golden, elaborately shaped, and extremely sharp. She smiled at the queen.
“Thank you.”
“You’ll also find out there is a clearer quality to your night vision. I understand that your lenses had another few abilities, but I had no need for such things myself, so I cannot tell whether that’s an improvement. My doctor assured me it was.”
“Your majesty…”
“Call me Frigga.”
“Hah. Umm, my queen, I… Why are so kind to an intruder?”
“Because you need someone to be kind to you. And, I cannot, in good faith, ask a favour from you without offering something back.”
“What favour?”
“I hoped that you would accept our agreement. I cannot find my son, as you know. To tell you the simple truth: I miss him. And I am afraid for him. I can see glimpses… But he would never, at this point, accept meeting me. At least not for some time. Someone as driven as you are, my little human, you should succeed at it. He will not resist your attempt at locating him.”
“Why not? He knows I am angry.”
The queen smiled.
“You need to tell him that, not me. And when you do find him, I need you to convince him to get in touch with me.”
“That’s all? That is all you need on my side of the agreement?”
“Yes.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, Teuta.”
“Can I go now?” Teuta fidgeted with her new, stronger claws, still afraid she’ll get a no for an answer.
“Of course. But allow me another little favour. In this pouch, you’ll find enough units to buy yourself some good, very, very, VERY warm clothes. That world you’re going to, it has a soul made of pure ice. The kind that lingers on in every vein of the universe it touches. Not to mention the winds, they lash at your skin like studded whips, drawing blood to the surface and sucking it out, only to freeze it in place. The stone hard welts of blood will create jagged gashes that take a very long time to heal. The monsters which resemble bilgesnipes, on a grander scale, can sniff out foreign blood extremely far away; so you’ll need to be fast, and invisible.”
Teuta gulped loudly, slouching. Frigga kept leaning closer, giving this scary tale of hers an added oomph. Then she leaned back in her chair, shrugging.
“However, there is an excellent hotel in the main port city, called Angrbotha. They have these wonderful little shrimp cocktails. I suggest the medium size, the large one can make you feel quite drowsy,” she added, grinning. Teuta kept thinking how much mischief she projected; there was definitely something resembling trickster behaviour in her, especially considering Loki seemed to be adopted. Interesting.
“I will have to insist on one more thing. You need to get those clothes in Shangri-La.”
“No, no, Gullveig is there and I-“
“Don’t worry about Gullveig. I’ve paid for your stay in Tehran Interversal.”
Teuta’s eyes bulged out. That was the most luxurious stay available.
“And all the expenses included. You can stay there indefinitely. The managers owe me a favour.”
“Hmm. Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes! Take a breather. Let all of this sit with you. Rest. Take a bath. Get a massage. Make conversation with other guests, not just creatures for pleasure or somebody for bargaining. The Norns know you need it.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re the closest I’ve come to my son in a long, long time. I am not missing out on a chance here. You’re doing me a favour, really. I see you’re nervous to be on your way.”
Frigga handed her the hefty pouch and took her hand. Silently smiling, they took the same shady hallways back, and then some more, out of what seemed a smaller exit out of the palace. In a blip of an eyelash bat, they were enveloped in Frigga’s golden hued magic and found themselves in front of the Almighty Heimdall.
“My queen.” He bowed, and then darted a look at Teuta. She felt as if a searing hot poker tore through her and smashed her insides against the floor.
“A spy.”
“Oh shush, she’s just a little girl.”
“She broke Skurge’s nose.”
“There’s hardly any lasting aesthetic damage done there.” The queen smirked. Heimdall leaned toward her. Holy shit that’s a huge head! Teuta’s mouth opened.
“Heimdall, stop scaring my guest. She has a hard journey ahead of her. She will go find my boy.”
“But she is just a human.”
“You should know there is more to the smaller corners of our universe than meets the eye.”
“Indeed, my queen.” He squinted at Teuta.
“I’ll have my eye on you, little girl.” His voice reverberated powerfully.
Teuta forced a polite smile, which felt like she probably looked as if there are two sticks pulling on the corners of her lips.
“Hopefully not both of them.” She uttered, more to herself.

Heimdall squinted for a second, before the vast sphere suddenly started echoing with his quake of a laugh. Teuta flinched, squeezing her shoulders against her neck from the fear. She looked at the queen, who was grinning at Heimdall, obviously content to see him laugh. At this point, she was beginning to be bothered with being treated as a tiny child who was making the grown-ups laugh.
“Heimdall, she will be going to Shangri-La. May I suggest the alleyway behind the Tehran Interversal? The sear won’t make that much of an impact there.”
“Certainly, my queen.” He elegantly motioned to the farthest tunnel next to a large bronze cogwheel and looked at Teuta. She turned to face the queen and extended a hand. The queen took it.
“Thank you. Truly. I will do my best to make sure I honour our agreement.”
“A word of advice, Teuta, if you will: don’t give him that dragon immediately. Wait for the moment in which he might need to be comforted.”
Teuta smiled and looked to the floor.
“You know I took it.”
“Agile little hands, dear girl. I didn’t notice immediately.” The queen winked at her, and then patted her shoulder, showing her the billowing white light which opened the passageway. With a last tiny smile, she walked into the light, afraid of what was in front of her. Behind her, queen’s voice was fading away:
“Heimdall, why didn’t you inform me about existence of talking raccoons? How interesting! What a world we live in, old sport!”

Chapter Text

The trip took very little to no time. Just a few astonishingly exhilarating breaths. After all, Andromeda was quite near to the Asgardian star system. Teuta landed on her knees, slightly scraping them. Wincing, she got up, to see the prism drawing upwards and disappearing, leaving only a few floating sizzling papers lifted from the floor by the wind. She sighed, casting her eyes down and seeing the rough outline of the pattern left behind by the lightspeed of the travel. It was hidden by cobbles and the dirt of the street. Looking around, she saw a couple of homeless men sleeping soundly, hugging their bottles. It was a very narrow alley, its muddy floor and the cracked windows of the warehouses providing jarring contrast to the clean, shining wall of the hotel. It was as if it leaned against this backdrop. Teuta dusted off her palms and started walking around the building, adjusting her backpack.

One thing was for certain. She needed to get out of these childish clothes, the lime green oversized cargo trousers which were now dirty, and the undersized black top which her ample breasts almost poured out of. She pushed them inside a little and tried tapping her wild hair into some semblance of a haircut before she entered.

The lobby of the hotel was not so long as it was wide, offering a good view both left and right. The wall seemingly gliding down was a faded brownish orange colour, covered with a depiction of a series of meaningless fountains. There were seven of them, quite large; at least the water looked well painted. A look to the right revealed several leather armchairs, empty now, and not much else. The reception was to the left, its hefty desk made from black walnut, seeping into the wooden floor, its kind undeterminable. She started approaching it, clutching the straps of her backpack like a schoolgirl, already feeling sorry she hadn’t asked Frigga for a change of clothes.
Stealing something and staying at a lavish hotel was different: she’d appear in rich dresses, acting like a snobbish dignitary. She didn’t do it very often; her nature and her training compelled her to seek out better hiding. Something inconspicuous. …this was not that. This was a grand welcoming party for the whole city to see. Two guards standing next to the desk looked at her warily. She smiled, and retained that polite expression when she approached the desk.
“Umm… Hi.”
“How can I help you, Miss…?”
Teuta just realised she had no clue what name the reservation was made under. Shit.
“I think I might have a reservation here.”
“You think? I’m afraid I don’t understand.” The polite receptionist blinked at her.
“Well, it was supposed to be made for me by a…” Teuta bit the inside of her cheek, “by the queen of Asgard.”
One of the handsome guards snorted loudly and choked back a laugh. The other one nudged him in his waist. The receptionist darted a look at them and then took a long breath, opening his palms for a second, before nodding and smiling at her.
“Just a moment.”
After a minute of typing on his computer, in which Teuta stared daggers at the guard, who tried very hard to keep his twitching lips still and avoid looking at her, the receptionist’s eyes widened to an extent she didn’t think was possible on a human male. He looked like an owl. Leaning over the very high desk, his tie crumpled in the process, he obviously took a look at her lime green trousers and nodded to himself.
“Uhh, miss Teuta Litentyv?”
Teuta smiled, looking down at the desk for a moment. Little thief. Very funny, Queen, very funny.
“Yes.”
“Miss Litentyv, welcome to Tehran Interversal!” He started snapping his fingers repeatedly and very loudly at the bellboy, who ran towards the desk. “Ravi, fetch Miss Litentyv’s luggage!”
“There’s no luggage. Only my backpack – no, no please don’t touch it, I’ll carry it myself, thank you.”
“Miss, there is a refreshment waiting for you in your room. Ravi will accompany you there immediately, I am sure you’re weary after your travel and need to rest and perhaps get out of your… travelling clothes.”
“Not necessary. Can I have my key?”
“Oh!” The receptionist was obviously surprised by his own reaction - trained staff couldn’t have allowed themselves this sort of behaviour - and retrieved the key card in a heartbeat, bowing slightly when he handed it to her. She smiled and nodded at him, but truly couldn’t resist waving it in front of the mocking guard’s face and blowing him a raspberry. He bit his lips trying not to laugh. His colleague nudged him again, but the man was apparently an irreparable one, because he winked at her. She thought she even saw him sneak a look at her cleavage. The dark-skinned guard really was very handsome, with a firm jaw and a set of wide shoulders. She frowned for a second, but walked away.

She took the stairs to the third floor, wanting to avoid elevators. And encounters with snobbish guests. And indeed, the hotel was chock full of them, because the stairway leading to the room 307 forced her to walk next to a Kreean dignitary, whose lips twitched with disdain upon seeing her. She rolled her eyes and walked on. He stopped in his tracks, observing what she was doing, eyebrow slightly raising when he saw her unlocking a room.
And the room was… The room calmed her down. In her heightened confusion, wariness, and general awkwardness she didn’t know whether she expected a trap or a suite for queens. This was neither: it was a good, large, expensive room, but nevertheless, a normal one for such a hotel. A large, double-glazed window offered a view of the rooftops of the main streets of Shangri-La, a beautifully inviting bed with a puffy feather duvet, and some accompanying furniture. On the table in the middle of the room was a bottle of champagne and a crystal serving platter with, of course, a crystal bell top containing a slice of cake; it was something made with hazelnuts and seemingly, magic, because when it melted on her tongue, Teuta moaned loudly.
The taste of that champagne made her regret the decision to quit school and burn the administration office down, because if she had managed to finish it, and gain actual employment as an actual spy for the various kingdoms, she would definitely be staying at places like this instead of her usual flea-infested motels. Even the reality of icky politics seemed to be a bit more palatable when the palate was glazed with a seven-layers hazelnut and magic slice. Chuckling to herself, she went to the bathroom, deciding to take a bath. The view of the white and gold marble, with actual lillies and their scent in a vase made her fill the round bathtub and tear off her clothes to soak her limbs inside it. Half an hour of pure relaxation had her dozing off; she woke, jumping up, her skin wrinkled.
There were no traces of the operation. She protracted her claws again, admiring the handiwork, before sighing and wrapping herself in a soft black bathrobe.
The window view offered the early night lights of the city.
Teuta realised she had no other clothes now, and tutted at her thoughtlessness. She could’ve stolen something prior – no, she could’ve bought something: opening the pouch, she sighed. Well damn, that was enough money to piggy off it for months. What if she just hid here, in this hotel, not going to Gullveig, not doing anything but eat and sleep and snug in this robe endlessly… not searching for Loki?

There was a scream.

She flinched, and realised it was from the room next to her. Another one: a shriek, followed by a laughter. And a moan. Oh. Right. Well, she wasn’t the only one enjoying the luxury. Speaking of which, she was hungry. With the memory of the queen assuring her everything was paid for she took to ordering a plate of steamed rice and the obviously Persian-themed Zeresh polo. And another piece of that cake. Stuffed, lazy, and extremely sleepy, Teuta dragged her body to the bed, shedding the robe and pulling the heavenly weighted duvet over herself.
She was more tired than it seemed, because when she woke up, the sun already passed its midday position. Groaning, and stretching, she yawned and got up.
…And why not order some coffee? Why not indulge in the luxury provided for by the queen? She took her time enjoying it and waking up; after which, she realised she should really go out and at least buy a change of clothes.

Not paying too much attention to their fit, she mindlessly picked up several pairs of wide wool trousers and jumpers. And a firm bra. And a few pairs of expensive panties. Dragging the bags back to the hotel, she was met by the handsome guard upon entering.
“Miss Litentyv.” He opened the doors for her, eyeing her same dirty green lime trousers, this time with a polite smile which didn’t reveal too much. But it was suspicious. She squinted at him. He grinned and elegantly bowed his head, ushering her inside. Ignoring this, she walked up to her room, avoiding the elevator again.
Walking down the hallway, she heard a zing of it opening, and the AI voice announcing the floor. She stopped in front of her room to see who would exit. It was an elderly human male, very tall, very lean. He wore a tight black rollneck sweater, with a dark green scarf, which seemed highly unnecessary. Already deciding it was a rich prick, she eyed down his form as he exited the elevator backwards, pulling the hands of the two very scantily clad girlies. Both of them blonde, and very gigglish. So, a rich funny prick. From that distance, she could just make out his profile which revealed a gleaming edge of a grin as he dragged them, while walking backwards. Faking a reluctance, one of them walked into the hallway. Nice legs, Teuta thought as she entered her room quietly. The laughter and the fake chime of it edged through the air and straight through her doors. She shook her head and placed her bags down.

It had been a few minutes when she realised the sounds of the guests still hadn’t quieted down. They seemed much like the sounds from last night, like someone was hosting an orgy. An ongoing one, it seemed.
Honestly, for a hotel costing this much, this was truly unacceptable. Do they take in every kind of scum? Yes, they do, Teuta thought and burst into laughter directed at herself, pulling her new clothes out of the bags.
The sounds died down. For some time.
And then they increased in volume, accompanied by music. Good music. This was Midgardian ramped up blues rock. She found herself nodding her head in appreciation, until a whorish moan interrupted the guitar. It caused a shiver down her spine. She got up, walked to the wall and listened. More moans. The voice of a singer from the song. Steady beat of the drums.
And then, a woman’s croon: “Why don’t you join us?” Followed by silence.
Oh damn, that sounded fun.
She sighed, going back to her business.
After a while, she laid down, resting: well, it would’ve been resting; if it were quieter. Only it wasn’t. Even an orgy needs to die out by now, Teuta thought, because this sort of completely raucous behaviour was tolerable in some of the shitshow places she stayed at, but this…
Teuta tried very hard to think about any number of reasons why she should be annoyed, and not envious of the helluva time in the adjoined room. The reasoning was stained by her own incredibly loud past behaviour.

At last, she thought of it: the actual golden queen of the golden Asgard ordered her to rest for a few days, and this was most definitely, decidedly, not resting. She chose against alarming the reception, afraid that the handsome guard would openly burst into laughter if she said that the other, posh guest was disturbing her rest and the hotel policy of dignified behaviour – and, of course, even this delusion of being annoyed would be frayed with her memories of herself if she snitched anyone out; so she pulled on something more dignified: black trousers and a black sweater, adjusted her wavy, clean, long hair, and walked out, clearing her throat.
Several overlaying voices yelling over the music grew even louder as she took the few steps to the room 306. Swallowing the unnecessary amount of saliva, she knocked once. Nothing. Twice. Nothing. She started repeatedly knocking, banging against the firm oak.

And the doors flew open. The very, very handsome elderly gentleman was still in his clothes, though they seemed to be pulled in several different directions. His poisonous green eyes were paired with a gigantic grin on the beautifully wrinkled face. And then the grin vanished. His mouth remained opened, openly gawking at her.
He seemed to be in a terrified shock. The expression caught her off guard, and she stared at him for way too long, as the darkness behind him displayed human limbs and a waft of heavy arousal.
At last, she shook her head.
“Excuse me. You’re… I’m… I’m sorry, but you’re awfully loud. I cannot rest. Would it be possible to quiet down? This is a respectable establishment.”
Teuta winced at pronouncing these words, but she pronounced them nonetheless. His shock lasted an unusual amount of time, before it mellowed out into a radiant smile. He took a look at the scene behind him, and then took two hurried steps out of the room, slamming the doors closed and making Teuta stumble backwards to stay a civilised distance away from him.
“I… am incredibly sorry. I truly am. We shall cease this immediately.” He seemed to be struggling for words in this surprisingly honest apologetic display. “I have no words. This was inexcusable, unwarranted, deplorable behaviour to witness, Miss…?”
Teuta stuttered.
“Uh… I… Litentyv.”
He let out a chortle and looked at the floor.
“Miss Litentyv, can you forgive me?”
Her expression was now a mixture of utter confusion and shock.
“It’s, uh, it’s fine, really. Do your thing, just… More quietly.”
“I assure you, this isn’t my thing. It is clearly a mistake.”
Her eyebrow went up as she blinked.
“Well, uh-“
“Laufeyson. My name is Laufeyson.” He extended his long-fingered hand to her. She didn’t accept it, knowing where it had probably been just a few minutes ago, just looked at it warily. This seemed to heighten the tone of his chuckle, and he pulled it back.
“None of my business, Mr. Laufeyson. Thank you for listening to me. I didn’t want to go to the reception.”
“No, no, thank you, Miss Litentyv.” There seemed to be a drawl to his words. “Thank you for your understanding.”
She nodded and turned on her heel. He remained exactly where he was.
“Oh, so we’re neighbours?”
“I don’t live here. I’m just staying for a few days.”
“Where are you going next?”
She turned and looked at him.
“None of your business.”
He grinned again.
“Of course.”
Teuta grabbed the handle of the doors.
“By the way, how did you get this room? I thought I would have this floor to myself.”
“You didn’t rent it out, it seems.” She shrugged, not wanting to give into the obvious invitation for prolonging this conversation, and walked in, not looking behind herself.

Loki would need to take a serious check in with himself. Something about casting the latest spell didn’t go quite right, as the blocking effects of it failed; he’d tried magically preventing the staff from renting out any rooms on this floor, and it had worked well so far, but there was… TEUTA, of all people, in the room next to his. He sat on the floor of his room, having been unable to do anything else ever since she closed her doors.
Well, and after he sent away the two girls. Beautiful, and eager as they were, and as interested in indulging in pleasure as they were, and absolutely adamant that they were the ones who were going to jumpstart his dead sex drive as they were – they had to go. Gently. But they were very disappointed. They had even accused the angry blonde from next door, and after they saw the shadow that befell his face upon uttering a dirty word about her, they had suggested an invitation. And that was the end. He pulled on his polite face and asked how much did he owe them? One of them gasped with shock, screaming about how they were NOT hookers, and soon, after angrily pulling on the straps for clothes, they dusted out of the room.
Loki sat down, finally releasing his illusion. It had been a touch of true luck that he had it on in the first place, so that she wouldn’t recognise him. His mind had been swirling with questions. Why was she here? What did she steal to provide for this luxury? Not that it didn’t suit her – but thieves and spies rarely underwent such public outings. Well, the ones such as her. It was probably a well-paying task, or perhaps an amenity because she took a job from somebody very rich. But who would rather have his spy not hidden? Somebody who wanted her. Loki gritted his teeth, surprised by the clench in his stomach: but the thought of her indulging in an affair with someone else felt strangely acidic. He laughed at himself.
Another thing surprised him: when he laid his eyes on her angry face, her beautiful, splendid, adorable angry face, he wanted to pull the illusion off and lift her off the ground in a hug, such was the rising of sheer delight in his stomach. In the charged moment, he hadn’t even thought of the punch that would herald, seeing how she was probably still rightfully furious with him. But so many people were, why did he care about that now? He did right by her, he returned the magic. Had that softened her anger? After all, he did help her. To even think about what she would have to go through to find another willing sorcerer (Kreean blood, as clever as that trick was, would not have settled the debt), and to convince him to actually give back the magic… He did her a favour. She wouldn’t have seen it that way, but it was an immense favour and she should be grateful. Yes.
Loki chose to focus on that instead of the memory of his cock twitching with delight when he observed her obvious confusion. What was that about, even? Two naked, willing, not mentally deviated girls wanted him – nothing; and one look at an angry, beautiful but clearly angry woman who would definitely not go down willingly (not yet), and the damned thing in his trousers sends best wishes from an afterlife.

He looked at the wall which separated their rooms. His desk was against it, inches away from the headboard of her bed. Standing up, he flicked the mess away, and the room was clean yet again. He stood next to the desk, laying his ear on the wall. Nothing. She was quiet.

Teuta kept thinking about that man, and his rolled-up sleeves, and those eyes and that gigantic grin he sported when he began nagging her. She went there, banging her boots against the floor, to set her foot down and demand silence. That was shitty behaviour. But she did it anyway, and surprisingly, it worked.
It had not been ten minutes when she heard the women yelling at him, something incomprehensible, and the loud bang of his doors when they clearly exited. She even peeked out to see them storming inside the elevator. Hmm. Did he seriously chase them away because she asked for silence? That was extremely weird. Perhaps he had been afraid of being discovered? A politician, happily married, most likely from Earth – the press would have a field day. That was it, she thought, and laughed. A good ole story begging for bribery: a sleazy old douchebag wanting to fuck as many young girls as he can, all without being seen, while hypocritically vouching for traditional values. She should have asked for money for her own silence. And maybe she will if he continues with that later this evening, which was coming soon.

Teuta was getting fed up with being cramped up in this clinically cozy room. She wasn’t used to it. Too much comfort would alleviate the dread, and too much rest chased away ongoing alertness, leaving space for the anxiety to creep back in. If it could be called anxiety: it was a very real fear.
Several wrong steps and she risked being caught. The nap didn’t help, for she drifted away into a nightmare:
She had begged her mother not to do it, pulling on her hand. Her mother, with her empty grey eyes, patted her head and snatched Nebula’s hand away from her. The blue girl, unconscious, with her stomach sliced open and her intestines on display, laid there like a gutted animal.
“Take her away.” She instructed the guards, who lifted her easily, seeing she was a little girl back then, and carried her out of the room. She fought like hell, screaming and crying. And then one of them held her down while another administered an injection of something. She fell asleep.

Gasping loudly, her breath shivering with deadly fear, Teuta sat up, clutching at her chest, before she slouched down, gulping. She knew it: she knew she could not rest too much, because then she had the nightmares and it would remind her that wherever she went, no matter how fast she ran, no matter how far – her past would catch up with her. Or, her destiny, as her mother so aptly put it.
What if it was, in fact, destiny? What if all of her bloody effort to get away was for nothing, and she’ll end up in Ebony Maw’s hands, and he’ll continue twisting and malleating her into submission? If she had only been a random unnamed child there, she would have been better off. But the dark, cruel sorcery defiled her mother’s mind, deforming the connection to her child into a need to still keep her around, but as a pinnacle of her elaborate, exquisitely painful experiment – a gift to her grotesque, harrowing master.
Teuta held the bedpost, feeling tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. Tears of pure fear, elaborate, gut-wrenching and paralysing pain. There was no stopping it.
She couldn’t move: the effort it would take to lift her arm felt as if there would be discomfort akin to pins and needles that would follow a numb limb. A creeping sensation enveloped her thighs and she felt every raised piece of her flesh, from her toes to her breasts was a dangerous protrusion that would be cut off if she moved.
Her stomach held a lump of said fear. It travelled throughout her intestines and thumped in her brain, as steady as blood and as ominous as a loud movement in a place of hiding.
Anxiety-riddled, paralysed, she slumped down on the floor and wept silently, trying to squirm around the scenarios of what could yet come and the horrors of things passed.

If she was ever caught again, she would kill herself. In a way that wouldn’t allow resurrection. In the peak of her helplessness, she almost cried out to God in a desperate plea. But Teuta knew better: any gods who listened would only laugh as they walked away from her.

Hours passed. She cried out all she had in her, and replaced the water lost with the expensive hotel artisanal one. And the clench in her stomach gave way to pure hunger.
She couldn’t be in this room anymore. This evening, she would go to the hotel restaurant and have a meal there, to observe the posh guests and distract the mind.
Washing her face and pulling on clean clothes, she didn’t even hide the swelling of her face. If somebody dared to notice, a clean clink of coins would most certainly convince them it was none of their business. That or a clink of her claw in front of their eyeballs. It was essentially the same, pure money cutt at the flesh as deep as a blade, only slower. It made people do equally desperate things. Teuta pondered on this stupid metaphor as she exited her room and fumbled with the key card.
Walking on, her hand in her pocket, she reached the reception. Instead of the receptionist, the mocking guard was there. He lifted his eyes towards her and frowned, his mouth opened.
“Miss Litentyv?”
“Could you point me in the direction of the restaurant?”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. The restaurant?”
“Miss Litentyv”, he went around the desk and reached her, “what is wrong?”
Her next inhale of breath was a shivering one, and she gulped.
“I’m just having a really bad day. And I’m hungry.”
In a very unprofessional manner, he put a hand on her shoulder. The warm touch felt reassuring, and that sensation sent a shiver of discomfort down her spine, making her eyes tear up.
“Are you sure you don’t want food sent up to your room?”
“N-no, I don’t want to be there now.”
“Alright.” His voice was soft, the large eyes the colour of a black coffee on a sleepy morning, and his hand very, very warm as he now placed it on the top of her back.
“I’ll take you there.”
She sniffled, and smiled at herself.
“There, you can continue mocking me.”
“I… was not. I am sorry, that was unprofessional.”
“It’s quite alright. I am not used to places like this. You were the only one who actually acknowledged that. I like honesty.” She looked at him, now with a small smile. His eyes were warmer as he smiled back.
“It wasn’t you. You’re beautiful, Miss Litentyv. It was the idea that one can hold a conversation with the queen of Asgard wearing lime green cargo pants.”
Teuta snorted into laughter, which was still painted with a slight shiver. They kept walking down the hallway.
“Here we are. I am Ali. I will be the night receptionist for this week. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. Even if it’s an ear to listen.”
She smiled, sighing.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and turned, going back the same way. She kept looking at his back, pondering between sitting down at the reception and retelling her entire life story, completely honestly, to a complete stranger; or having an obscene amount of comfort food followed by an entire bottle of the most expensive Kylosian whiskey.

She entered the restaurant. Lights were dimmed, tables separated enough, a few of the guests sitting as far away from each other as possible. Perfect. She trod the soft carpet to the farthest corner, choosing one of the booths to hide in, under the sheen curtain of the soft piano music. Not looking the staff directly in their eyes, she ordered a hearty meal and some lemon pie for dessert. And wine.
She didn’t know if it was possible for her to remain sober, but the idea of the disappointed chokehold of the queen’s eyes kept her slightly above the middle of the bottle. Rubbing the pad of her finger on her lips, she tried determining how long this bout of helplessness would last, as she was eager to continue on her mission. It always took a few days until she would assemble herself enough to get on with the next distracting thing: Jotunheimr would require some preparation, first of which would be a good, protective suit and a coat.

Chapter Text

“Miss Litentyv?”

She observed the hem of the trousers of the man standing next to her table.

“I’m good, thank you.”

It wasn’t the staff.

“Miss Litentyv?”

She lifted her eyes and was met by her neighbourly guest, Laufeyson. He was about to speak, when the smart expression he wore melted upon seeing her. He sat down immediately. She frowned, shaking her head.

“Nobody told you-“

“What happened?”

“Nobody told you you could sit down!”

He leaned over the table, his eyes huge and worried.

“What happened to you? Did someone hurt you?”

“Uh… Laufeyson, how dare you sit at my table?”

He let out an annoyed gust of breath, before leaning back on the chair. She made the same movement, sighing.

“It obviously doesn’t concern you in the slightest. Get up.”

“Was the receptionist bothering you? I saw him touching you.”

She frowned, leaning forward.

“Were you following me?”

“NO, I just happened to be going to the restaurant as well.”

“Right.”

“I do have to eat.”

“What, between the afternoon whores and the night sluts?”

He chortled, looking away.

“Yes, they are quite tiring. Especially when they have to be quiet.”

She observed him. He was very elegant, with perfectly combed greying hair and shapely wrinkles. Only his eyes were vibrant and hard to fit into that picture. And that’s what made him attractive: the idea of a young soul in this elegant, experienced couture of flesh. Teuta almost hadn’t noticed that her own worry had been replaced by a kind of interest in who this was.

The waiter arrived.

“Anything for you, sir?”

“Yes, I’ll have a slice of that same lemon pie. And some prosecco, please.”

She frowned, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re just going to invite yourself, are you?”

“I already did. Now, tell me what happened to you.”

He spoke, intertwining his elegant fingers and placing them on the table, as if he was getting prepared to listen to her confession. It was funny. She snorted a laugh and looked to the side.

“Do you honestly think I would tell a complete stranger what was bothering me?”

“Why not? Sometimes it cures the soul.”

She mimicked his movements with the hands on the table.

“Okay. Let’s see. I was… desperately inconvenienced by my newest travelling destination not having hotels that befit my persona, so I cried for three hours.”

He pursed his lips.

“This doesn’t befit your persona. Only a palace does.”

She rolled her eyes, removing her hands from the table.

“I’m not that interesting. And I cannot be paid for.”

The lemon pie arrived, but neither of them looked at the waiter; they just fell silent for those few seconds, staring at each other.

“I didn’t suggest I wanted to pay for you. And I think you are more interesting than you let on. I’ll pry it out of you.”

“Oh, you will? And how, pray tell?”

Loki was seriously battling removing his illusion in this moment. The look on her face would be worth it. He refrained, though, and smirked instead.

“You long to tell someone of your troubles.”

Teuta was silent, sipping on her wine.

“I am a perfect listener. I don’t judge, I don’t give uncalled for advice. Unless you want it. Try me: tell me something you’ve never told anyone before, and see how it feels.”

“For a perfect listener, you sure do talk a lot, Mr. Laufeyson.”

He smiled, before waving a hand, wanting her to speak. She licked her lips, tallying the possible outcome. And then she spoke. Why not?

“I am both on the run and in pursuit.”

“Hmm. Who are you pursuing?”

“Aren’t you more curious about what I’m running from?” Teuta raised an eyebrow. He looked away for a second, completely silent.

“Alright. What are you running from?”

Her smile vanished, eyes acquiring a glassy coat of emptiness for a fleeting moment.

“Death.”

He frowned.

“Painful, gruesome death. Either by torture, or suicide. How about that, Laufeyson? Is that quirky enough for you?” She glared at him. He blinked several times, seemingly worried.

“Is that why you’ve been crying?” His voice was soft.

“Yup.” She popped the “p” and downed her glass, pouring one more.

Loki was worried. There was a weight on his chest, of not knowing what had happened to her. What if she got herself into a situation she couldn’t get out of? With her temper, it would be likely to happen. He fought the nagging need to pull her into his arms and keep her there. Where was that need coming from?

“How very grim of you, Miss Litentyv.”

“Indeed. Would that be all?”

“Nope.” He popped the “p” like she did, but it sounded incredibly out-of-place in his suave voice, so she laughed; and then she felt bad for encouraging this man, because he took it as a sign he should, most definitely, be encouraged. Loki was very easily encouraged. And that laugh seemed to loosen the clench of his stomach.

“If you were dead, you could not be enjoying this silken lemon pie.” He moaned at the taste, having been busying himself eating so that he didn’t do something foolish. She realised she still hadn’t touched it, so she sighed and took a bite. It really was silky. And the lemon wasn’t that creamy tamed velvety taste it usually was; the tanginess hit her tongue unexpectedly. She frowned and licked her lips, taking another bite. And another, without really swallowing. Loki stared at her lips, feeling his mouth water.

“It really is good,” she said with her mouth full. It made him grin.

“You really aren’t used to these sorts of places, are you?” he said, honestly. She realised he was smirking at her uncouth eating.

“What, hotels for people that are so out of touch with the basic understanding of what it feels like to enjoy something, honestly enjoy it without pretence, so they have to get elaborately wild, with not one rented lover, but two, and not even that is enough, so they have to do it every day?”

“Hmm. Yes, exactly.”

He said it, caught off guard, having been presented with a such a clear understanding of his own condition and some recent realisations. Bizarrely, she read into his emotional state. Even under the illusion… for the illusion aligned perfectly with who he had become, apparently.

“No, I’m not used to these places,” she said, now a smart little smirk on her face, sipping on her wine.

“What do you do, then, for living?”

“I’m a spy.” She cleared her throat, expressionless now.

“And you tried to convince me you weren’t interesting. Are you spying right now?”

“No. What about you?”

“I am… An entrepreneur. Currently finishing a deal which will have me celebrated back home on Earth.”

“Funny, I had pegged you as a politician.”

This earned her a laugh.

“Do you want more?” he said, pointing to the empty dessert plate. She nodded, and he invited the waiter, mentioning another bottle of prosecco as well.

“I’ve never actually had that.”

“What, prosecco? Here you go.” He took the extra empty water glass and poured a bit inside. She took a sip and smacked her lips several times. It was adorable. Why do I find inexperience adorable? he asked himself.

“I like it. So, you’re from Earth?” she said, leaning over to take his bottle and pour some more for herself.

“Yes, Northern Arkadia, born and raised. How about you?”

“South. The sea.”

“So, we’re just countryfolk in a foreign land, discussing drinks, death, and fucking?”

The way he pronounced fucking made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“It seems. Laufeyson… That name doesn’t sound very familiar.”

“It’s not. I have relatives in Jotunheimr.”

She huffed a breath into her glass, before shaking her head with a grin. Funny old world.

“And your first name?”

He seemed to be tightening his lips for a few seconds, thinking about something, and biting his tongue while his eyes twinkled playfully.

“Luca.”

“Ahh, that’s a southern name.”

“Yes, it is. What about you?”

“Teuta. Like the queen.”

“The pirate queen?”

She smiled, obviously happy he knew about it. Loki realised he hadn’t seen this expression on her before, that of a simple smile. She grinned, and smirked, and tried to hide it while in prison; it turned to sour faces, underlying lust and hunger which made him ravenous; it had been a clever eye squint, an invitation, a small flutter of her lower lip before she had given into the kiss; but never this: a pure smile.

“By the Nine, you are beautiful,” he muttered to himself. She shook her head, showing she didn’t understand what he said.

“I said: shame the Rome subdued her.”

She nodded, kneading her tongue on the inside of her cheek, tapping her fingers against the glass.

“My pursuit is to continue in Jotunheimr, actually,” she said, observing his reaction. His eyebrows twitched.

“Really? Who are you pursuing?”

“Somebody with relatives there.”

Loki cocked his head.

“Maybe I know him?”

“Him?” Teuta asked, carefully.

Loki bit his tongue. Damn. And he had been doing so well. What a beginner’s mistake. Time to up the stakes and play into her pride.

“Your lover? You are pursuing a man, I presume?”

Her entire face contorted now, into a one of pure spite.

“Why did you presume that?”

“Well, you are a beautiful woman, fully alone in a hotel clearly not used to; you’re bitter and you’ve been crying for the few past hours.”

It worked. Her mind whooshed from the trail back onto reinstating her place in this game.

“Wow. Well, you’re from Earth, things clearly haven’t changed much back there. You’re this old and you still haven’t learned anything from your many travels throughout the universe?”

“Teuta. I was making a joke. Relax. It was a dumb, vain guess. I wanted to see if you had somebody. Don’t be mad at me.”

She frowned, annoyed to the imaginary heaven and back that he was, indeed, onto something there.

“Did you think I would laugh?”

“I was hoping you would. I didn’t think. I apologise.”

He placed his hand on his heart.

Goddamn him, he had beautiful hands. She leaned back on her chair. This kind of a gaming, tricky approach… it seemed familiar. Awfully, terribly familiar. She had been subjected to it enough times by the very designers of that game, in many different ways. After four glasses of mixing wine with another liquor, she knew where the road forked: she was either getting paranoid, seeing enemies everywhere, or her anxious mind was lulled enough to allow her subconsciousness to solve puzzles.

“It is a him. But no, he is not my lover, you got that part wrong.”

“Oh?” He waved a hand, pouring more prosecco. “Lucky for me, then.”

“You think that after the conversation about drinks, and death, we’d get to fucking?”

“Mmm.” He took a sip, looking at her across the glass. Teuta thought about how he skipped the talk of actual death, and even at mentioning it again, he just took the opportunity to straight to the fun part of her sentence. Even if this isn’t a particular trickster god, this man is an asshole. She had no remorse about what was to follow. Even if it was a trickster tactic in its core. After all, she learned from the very best.

“So vain of you. Very much like the man I’m pursuing.”

“There are no men like me.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few.”

“Alright. I’ll go with this. Who are you pursuing?”

He mimicked her position, and now they were the very farthest away from each other this evening.

“Well, it is a formidable creature. It is. I have to admit that. Very powerful. Good at hiding, good at escaping. Not so good at hiding in plain sight, not as much as it thinks it is; but better than the average, let’s put it like that.”

“Hmm. And why are you pursuing… it? Wasn’t it a him a moment ago?”

“It is and isn’t. It’s hard to tell in this universe of ours.”

Loki listened to her, unable to discern whether she was talking about him like this because she still didn’t know whether he had returned the magic, or she is so very pissed off she wanted to punish him for leaving her like he did. In any case, two things were clear. She was very, very mad. And she wasn’t on a different mission, in an affair with a different creature: she was after HIM. And that thought had him jaw-grittingly pleased. And blind to everything else in this moment.

“So, why then? What is your objective here? Are you working for someone?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, my dear elderly Mr Laufeyson?”

He smiled. He had almost forgotten he was in this guise: she seemed to have the ability to make him forget a lot.

“I’m not that old. But tell me this much, Teuta, what will you do once you capture this creature?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I think I’ll play with him.”

“Play?” His voice dropped down slightly.

“I’m pretty certain he likes games.”

Loki leaned forward, grabbing the bottle and trying to fill her glass. She put her hand on top of it.

“No, thank you. I need to stay sober. Well,” she chuckled, faking slowing the movement of her eyelids. “Not drunker than this. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“So soon?” He placed his palm on top of hers, caressing it slightly. It had the effect of minutely slow goosebumps on her skin.

“I hear it’s cold there. I need to get a warmer coat.”

“Not cold. It’s freezing.”

“Ah well. Discomfort comes with my line of work.”

“You said you will play with him. What kind of a game?”

Teuta smiled, still not entirely convinced. She bit her lower lip and kneaded on it.

“I’ll make him pursue me.”

“Who wouldn’t? You’re making me want to pursue you and abandon my own line of work.”

She chuckled.

“Ahh, what the hell. Pour me some.” She removed the hand from under his, pulling on the glass so that the bit of the fluid already in the glass spilled in her direction, spraying on her sweater.

“Ah! Damn. No, no, it’s okay, I’ll just wash it with some water, it shouldn’t leave a stain. Give me a second.”

She got up, scrunching the fabric together and asking the waiter the directions to the toilet. Loki stared after her, sighing once she exited the line of sight, and slumped in his chair. His face was serious. Why did she cry? It couldn’t have been because of him. And all that talk of death… What could cause that level of desperation? Because it was clearly painful desperation he saw in her eyes. It made him sloppy, jagged in his approach. He’d need to step up.

Teuta almost got stuck on the toilet window, before using the pipes and the exhaust vents on the outer, back wall of the building to climb up. The claws were magnificently sturdy, cracking through the plaster and the stone with impressive precision. She hoisted herself up on the windowsill and fumbled with finding that tiny line on the back of the lever which allowed it to wiggle about. It was loose now, and she managed to open the window and jump inside silently.

If she had gone through the restaurant doors, he would have known something was wrong. This was better. She looked around herself in his room. The bed was made, the desk clean, containing only the provided pencil and a tiny, decorative cube note box. There was almost nothing there that would imply anybody was living there, except for the faint scent of pine trees on the pillow. She inhaled and lowered her cheek, caressing the silky pillowcase. Goddamn him, goddamn him to Hel and back, she thought, inhaling deeply and placing her lips there, before straightening up and going to the closet. Nothing. Fucking sorcerers and their secrets.

She sighed, carefully exiting back out the window and down the building. This took less time, so the mental preparation for facing him was marred by that scent that lingered in her nostrils. Even without that, Teuta was never good at seduction. Well, seduction for work. Ask her to climb the tower of Samarqand and dance on the very tip of it – no problem, give her five minutes and a good pair of boots. But seduction… She always tried evading those methods, seeing how she rarely succeeded in separating pleasure from work; and overall, using her body to gain anything. Abusing it was a whole other thing: she sometimes punished herself with the excess. But it always left her feeling empty and tired. She feared that the weariness might interfere right now, so she splashed her face with water, steeled her will and dropped her eyelids down just enough so that she looked relaxed. Her sweater was now also covered with random water stains.

Not prepared enough to see him just yet, it hit her like a freight train: it was him. She was sure of it now. All the disguises in this universe couldn’t have hidden it: This was Loki. Loki. The evading dick of a god of mischief. All the anger in this universe couldn’t have hidden it: she wanted him. The very idea of that scent enveloping her, and the memory of how hungry his mouth was when he drank her kisses made her skin ache. It was intoxicating, and for a few of the nearest steps closest back to the table, her mind was blank.

“Did you get them out?”

“What?”

“The stains.”

“Oh, oh, yeah I did.”

“You took long enough.”

“I…” She smiled, looking down. “I tried to wash the puffiness out of my face. I look like absolute shit.”

She looked at him now: he was silent, his eyes thoughtful.
“This is the part where you say I look beautiful despite everything.” She waved her hand. He chuckled.

“You do, Teuta. Your beauty is always a well-kept secret for me. I just… I just wish I had more time. Alas, you’re not the only one leaving. I’ve extended this dinner, but there will be a chauffeur here in about half an hour.”

She frowned, thinking about the empty room. Wait.

“You’re leaving? So soon?”

“Business, my dear. I wanted to find out a bit more by you, so I’ve already prepared all of my bags, like a schoolboy, only to have an extra moment.” He chuckled to himself.

Teuta gulped. What if I’m wrong… Am… Am I that wrong? Am I imagining things? That could’ve been perfume. I’m going insane. This is just some… charming idiot.

“Oh.”

“You seem sad.”

“I’ll live. So, the dinner is over, then?”

“I’m afraid so. Will you allow me to walk you to your room?”

“Sure, why not.”

He got up before her, offering her a hand. She refused it with a smile and started walking next to him.

“So, where are you going next?”

“Back home, I’ll have a few weeks off. It’s been incredibly tiring, this entire galaxy.”

“All of them are. I might take some time off as well.”

“After you catch your creature?”

“Yes. Well, my time off will consist of some easy - easier jobs. I need them.”

“To get your mind off of the things troubling you? Like that death you were talking about?”

They stopped. She realised he pressed the button for the elevator. She observed his large eyes.

“Yes. Yes, exactly. Nothing like a good distraction.”

The elevator doors zinged open. They got inside. It had a golden metallic interior with wooden panels: they were intricately decorated with tiny arabesques, quite beautiful. Teuta pressed the button for her floor.

“Teuta.” His voice was stronger in this enclosed surrounding. He was gripping the railing behind him so hard his knuckles were white.

”Listen to me. This universe is more enormous than any of us realise. There is knowledge, and power, and truth so painfully beautiful it transforms mere humans into pioneers, and significant gods into minuscule insects. There is comfort, and salvation, and wisdom which will keep you silent with awe for a hundred years. The starlight and the cold, gratifying flourish of panchromatic rainbows to be basked in, creatures you’ve never even thought possible, narrowest slits of understanding you thought would be evading you forever.” He banged his fist against the button which halted the elevator in its place. Teuta felt paralysed.

“Teuta. There is love the magnitude of which can only be compared to the stripping ecstasy and spiritual intoxication of a closeup of supernova. Or that’s at least how it was explained to me.” He smiled, looking away for a moment. “And peace that will be like a warm blanket around frozen feet. Comfort that will permeate your cells and make you still and unmoving in the eye of the great storm of anxiety. All of your troubles will pass. Evil will get nearer and then dissipate into nothing. And you are on the brink of the eternity gazing at you from behind the horizon of that fact. You are eternal, undying, capable of living forever. You must never, never…” He took a step closer and grabbed her shoulders, his lips a thin white line. “Never think about abandoning this world without first experiencing all of that. Do you understand me?”

She kept blinking, her mouth opened. He stared at her so intently she felt heat rising up in her chest while her heart started pounding against it. She couldn’t think. He shook her, hard, clutching her shoulders to the point of pain. Back in the restaurant, while she was gone, Loki realised he is faced with a being that might soon cease existing. He would live on, but this pained, beautiful woman could kill herself, riddled with some ridiculously stupid pains that can most likely be cured with a pouch of money and a wrist-flick of annihilating magic. And that he couldn’t allow. Even if that meant he’d be at her side constantly, annoying her, and angering her, and infuriating her – only to make sure he didn’t wake up tomorrow with the realisation somebody like her was gone. And that he could have had a part in that. And that he could have tried harder, and he didn’t.

“Do you understand me?”

“I…” She shook her head, not knowing what to say. Loki backed her into one of the panels and leaned his head to hers, touching her forehead with his for a moment, before he kissed her – well, punched her lips with his. Teuta thought her heart moved to her throat, such was the annihilating bang of its beats, with the steady rush of blood to her face. She felt his thin lips pry hers open, and he enveloped her lower one, holding on as if for dear life. Her life.

Being faced with certain aspects of death could invoke a reaction of clinging onto said life with all of one’s might. Clinging on with the opposing aspect – that of brimming existence. That of chasing the heights of tangible sensations. Teuta shook his hands off and wrapped her own around his neck, pulling him impossibly closer, before joining in on the kiss. Her breath loudly increasing, her entire attention was pulled inside it: he tasted like life. Like all of those impossibly vast ideas he talked about, like the universe he assured her existed for her. She moaned, his wildly demanding lips lit a fire that pushed that rising heart back down, down, down into her womb, where it pulsated, awakening the desire. Teuta had slowly soaked through her underwear, and she separated to take a breath, but managed to only whimper. He bit her neck, which made her now dizzy and weak, so she slumped down, holding only by the push of her shoulders against the panel. Her jutting hips begged to be squeezed, so Loki squeezed them, sliding his hands to the zipper to get her trousers off immediately. He kept planting unexpectedly gentle kisses down her neck, so softly she almost didn’t notice when he separated to kneel down and drag her trousers off. Being wide, they went over her boots and back behind him, hitting the opposite panel. Hoisting her thigh over his shoulder, he continued plastering those soft kisses up the length of it, before kneading his nose against the fabric of her sodden underwear, moaning with impossible lust.

Teuta looked up at the mirrored ceiling. She could see the greying tips of his hair, her leg over him, her own woozy expression.

She knew that voice of his.

That impossibly lustrous moan could make her gush over that fake face in a second. She knew that taste in her mouth, that of Loki. But she was a few tiny steps away from this sickeningly sweet orgasm, and the realisation only made it sweeter. That was a god of mischief pushing her panties aside and parting her glued labia with that long, shivering tongue which made her shiver as well.

“Ahh… room… come on.” She managed, but he was now getting riled up, pulling both of her lips open with his fingers and sucking on her clit. She yelped, wrapping her fingers in her locks and pulling her own hair. If she was to achieve being at least a little bit productive, she had to hurry. But he was making it impossibly hard, so she pushed him away via her hand on his forehead. His tongue remained hanging out, his eyes dark when he looked at her; and there was only so much Teuta could do to not fall to the floor and beg him to fuck her senseless. 

“Room.” She said, picking her trousers off the floor and restarting the elevator. He was behind her, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her hair to the side to lick the shell of her ear. Teuta’s heart kept pounding as he whispered dark obscenities in her ear. Or was it just the unpronounced secrets of his hot breath?

The doors opened and he made her walk forward, pushing her with his body while sneaking his hand under her sweater, to cup her breast. The full feeling of it had him suddenly weak: he wanted to push her down on this carpet and rip her clothes off and feast on those soft, tasty tits. She barely managed to separate to open the doors of her room. They inched inside, all the while kissing like they didn’t need to breathe, only groan and whimper their need. Teuta pushed him on the bed and straddled him. He chuckled when his back hit it.

Teuta smiled at him.

Loki felt it in the elevator, he felt the painful, shrill arrows of pleasure try to pierce down his stomach. It burned like acid, like something liquid and incendiary was being forced down his shaft. But he was hungry, and she tasted like the fucking he missed so much, and he couldn’t stop. He wanted her gushing on him, that thick, syrupy essence of her down his chin while she rode out her orgasm.

“I want to ride you,” she whispered through a kiss. He frowned for a second, wondering how long it would take for her to realise he wasn’t hard.

“Ride my face,” he whispered instead, and slid his hands to her hips, wanting to pull her. She dragged them off and pinned them down, smiling at him. Then she pulled off her sweater and her bra, and Loki’s mouth watered; she let him knead her breasts, which threatened to make the burning sensation in his groin turn to a boiling point. Teuta took her sweater and started covering his eyes, wrapping it around his head.

“Play with me…” she whispered and licked the stretch of his lips. “Wait here.” He slumped down on the bed, waiting for the weight of her to cover him again and that lush wetness to stain his mouth. In the darkness, his mind kept spinning with the thoughts of what he would do to her if he was whole. Of how he would pin her against the wall and reduced her to a weak mess, of how he would have taken her at that restaurant, bending her over the table and pulling at her hair. Of how he would have laid her against this fluffy duvet and danced inside her, feeling that burning hot cunt clench him like he belonged there.

His thoughts kept him busy. Teuta, silent as always, pulled out the chainmail wraps, which were dwarven made, infused with magic which kept the prisoner’s own powers circulating within the confines of the shackles. Not unlike the ones they must have used in Tungsten A, to incapacitate his power. She then got on the bed and kissed him, slowly unbuttoning his shirt. When she was about to get to his belt, he caught her hands.

“What were…”

“I was observing you. You’re beautiful.”

“Te-“ She cut him off by shoving her tongue in his mouth, exhaling a gust of breath. Reaching to the side, she took the wraps and separated for a second, turning around to wrap them around his ankles. By the time he tried taking off the sweater snug around his eyes, she twisted the flexible metal around one wrist. He pulled the sweater off and was about to reach for her, when she bit his finger hard, drawing blood out and then securing it with the wrap.

“What-“

He tried lifting his hands. It didn’t work. His legs felt soldered to the bed. She sat on his stomach, observing his face. He could feel her wet dragging around his now naked skin whenever he spasmed, trying to move. As the shackles worked, nullifying his efforts – the illusion lifted, and Teuta was faced with his own gorgeous, gorgeous face, confused and mad. The black hair gleamed trapped under his back. She smiled.

He licked his lips slowly, before they stretched into a grin. He laughed, closing his eyes.

“Hi, Loki.” She spoke.

“Hi, my little human. You’ve seen through my illusion.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, I’ve had experience.”

“Nice shackles.”

“Yup. Got them back in Ephesus. It’s amazing the kind of things you can get if you know the right people,” she said, leaning down to his face to look threatening. He kept looking at her lips.

“So, are you going to do it?”

“Do what?”

“Sit on my face and let me drink you dry.”

Teuta swallowed the excess of saliva suddenly appearing in her mouth. She was drenched, and incredibly turned on. And not even that tiny slit of strength she found in herself to bind him had loosened it. He used the moment of her silence.

“I can feel your arousal drenching my skin, and your sweet cunt pulsating in time with your heart. Let me shove my tongue inside and show you that no matter what you think, my dirty little girl, you still haven’t met a true god of mischief. Does it ache down there, sweetling, is your sensitive little sex prickled and slippery? I'll kiss it better…”

She was an inch from him now, and he darted that lying tongue out and licked her lips. She opened them and he kissed her like she was the most savoury, mouth-watering meal he had ever eaten. She almost forgot her own name, her cunt sodden and still leaking all over his stomach, which was so hard, like stone, like something she could rub herself against, and she did, her clit gnawing on that marble in rhythm with her breathing, and she moaned, allowing him to lick inside her mouth, and swirl that lying tongue around. Teuta was afraid the shackles hadn’t worked on his magic and she was being magicked. But she knew better. This was only himself, and his hunger, and his ability to make painful how much she needed him to have her.

“Enough,” she said, getting up off of him. His head hit the pillow as he sighed, swallowing a breath. He could feel that burning fume breaching this imaginary border at the bottom of his sex. And then she stopped. He sighed again.

“You’re right. I’m… so turned on. Wait here. Oh, that’s right, you can’t go anywhere.”

She grinned, before going to the bathroom and slamming the doors behind her. There, Teuta slapped her cheek against the wall and shoved two fingers inside herself, while using her other hand to rub furious circles around her clit. Curling her fingers, she grazed her G-spot and moaned loudly.

Loki closed his eyes, flaring his nostrils. Damn. Keeping her aroused was to be useful in keeping her concentration away from the possible fact she could take up her revenge. In who knows what form. Perhaps, when she was done making those blood-curdlingly sweet, sexy sounds she’d come back here and cut off his manhood. Ah, well. It’s useless anyway.

Teuta came with a small wail, the tiny release shivering through her. Then she let out a loud sigh and turned on her shower, wanting to clean herself.

Loki frowned, before he rolled his eyes. Was this some ridiculous method of cutting through his possible preparation for this scenario? Did she plan on prolonging whatever this was, only to annoy him? This caused him to smile again. His little human thought about him. It was almost sweet.

She got out, still fully naked, and took to pulling on clean clothes. When she was done, she dragged the heavy armchair to the bed. He smirked at her. Teuta sat down comfortably, sighing with contentment.

“Were you waiting for this moment? Me, completely immobilised, at your mercy? That’s very arousing.”

“Really? Arousing? So why aren’t you hard?” She pointed to his trousers, where a prominent, but a very relaxed bulge rested.

“Ah. Well, that’s a discussion to be had while I’m not shackled and vulnerable.”

“Right. Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I wonder, though, do you truly take that much effort in all of your exploits? Like that little speech in the elevator?”

“No.”

“Why thank you, liar. Now, why are you in this hotel?”

“I was here before you. Why are you here?”

Teuta tapped her fingers on the armchair, weighing what to tell him.

“I thought I deserved it, having had quite a fucked-up time since you left me for worse on that shit planet.”

He sighed quietly.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, I bet you are now.”

“Teuta, I wanted to… I want to apologise for that. That was horrible. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Go on.”

“I… was weak, and powerless, and my mind was-“

“This is ridiculous. I don’t have to listen to this.”

“No, wait.” He tried lifting his hand, but it sent a shiver of pain down it. He winced. “I really am sorry.”

Now he turned his head and bore his eyes into her. They were bloodshot, almost no white on his eyeballs. The unpleasantness of it kept her silent.

“Gullveig planted something there in that magic. I don’t know what it was, and she… refuses to tell me, but that magic was poisoned, and…” He winced again, his voice faltering. “While what I did was entirely my own thoughtless decision, I…” His head fell back down. He started to realise what was causing this pain: these were no ordinary magic-blocking shackles.

“What are you playing at, Loki?”

“Well, I’m trying to talk you into letting me out of these, this is only going to get worse.” His breath was uneven.

Teuta’s armchair was comfortable and low, cushiony, very close to the floor. When one was relaxed in it, they were almost below the level of the top of the bed. And that was the justification Teuta came up with for herself. That she couldn’t see anything but his profile. Well, all that later on, when she was thinking about this moment. Right now, she spun her dagger in her hand, tracing the hilt of it with one of her claws, and trying to fumble through the entangled lies of his words.

“What… what are you going to do to me? You’ve caught your creature, the one you’ve been pursuing.”

“Oh don’t even get me started on that smug character of yours. Laufeyson. It’s ridiculous. Is that what you’ve been doing? Playing dress up and renting hookers?”

“They weren’t hookers.”

“You’ve what then, enchanted them?” she said, exaggerating the word with a flourish of her hand.

“I don’t do enchantment anymore. Not to anyone that doesn’t deserve it, anyway. Ah…” He gasped, squirming with apparent horrific discomfort.

“What do you mean, you don’t do enchantment?”

“Enchantment? One of the wizardry staples?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know about that?”

“No? That is the kind the bullshit I’m talking about. I fucking hate magic.”

He let out a chuckle, which was cut off very quickly by a hissing sound of somebody in sharp pain.

“And no, I didn’t take it up in school, before you even make a snide comment about that,” she added, pointing the dagger at him.

“They were a distraction,” he said, before he let out a gurgling sound. Like he was about to vomit.

“No, Loki, this is a distraction. Listen to me, I will drag you to Gullveig and you will give that magic back to her. If you’ve wasted it, I will slit your throat and be done with you.”

He said nothing. Not looking at her, he gurgled again. She frowned, and got up out of her armchair and gasped. Below the intricate chainmail straps, his skin was torn. Jagged, raised bloody welts allowed the metal to skid over the opened, bleeding flesh. There was a spiderweb of his veins all over the visible parts of his torso, because of how she left him, with his shirt unbuttoned. His eyes, now red as a poppy with the green irises glistening against it, bulged out. He looked at her.

“What is wrong with you?!” she yelled, kneeling on the bed and not knowing where to begin, so she frantically fisted her hands.

“You bloody idiot, didn’t you know whatever power is contained within these contraptions would kill me? Didn’t they tell—” He choked suddenly, and started coughing out blood. Teuta breathed fast as she pulled away the straps from him, throwing them behind herself.

“I already gave Gullveig you-you-“ He stuttered, turning on his hip, and started violently vomiting blood and food.

“What the… what the… what, what do I do?! Loki, what do I do?!” She grabbed his wrists, her fingers sliming around in the bloody opened wounds. His head fell down. He passed out.

Teuta jumped off of the bed, picking up bloody chainmail and stuffing it in a bag. She grabbed the phone.

“Ali?! Is that you?”

“Yes, Miss Litentyv?”

“Listen to me: I need your help. This is strictly confidential. I need you to fetch me a ride. I have a… friend who is very, very sick and he needs help immediately. I need to get him to my medic. Now, right, right now!”

“Which type of vehicle-“

“Anything, fast, make it fast, right now, he is dying! And please, Ali, I will pay you, please come here, I can’t carry him!”

She hung up, and looked around, finally grabbing the bottom sheet and cutting it into thick straps. She got back on the bed and started tying them up around the wounds, to stop the bleeding. With shaking hands, she took his shoes from the floor and pulled them on his feet, tying the laces as she heard the knock on the door. She yelled for Ali to come in.

He shivered when he entered, his mouth opened.

“No time, help me!”

“Teuta, what…”

“Ali, there is no time. He was injured!”

“Are you okay?” He was looking at her blood-stained hands.

She didn’t answer, just tried lifting Loki off of the bed. For somebody so lean, he was impossibly heavy. Ali jumped in, grabbing the lifeless body and flinging him over his shoulder.

“Gentle, please…”

“Teuta, what happened?”

“There’s no time to explain!”

“I’ll drive you myself. I can’t… I don’t know how to explain all of this.”

They entered the elevator, and Teuta kept looking at the red stains on Loki’s gleaming black hair, now hanging upside down. The redness seeped through the bandages.

She thought of his mother. Shaking her head, she almost started panicking: she didn’t want to torture him, she didn’t want to maul him… it’s… he looked like the bodies under her mother’s terrifying experiments. Teuta cried now, trying very hard to hold onto her sanity. Ali shook her shoulder with his free hand.

“Did… you do this?”

“NO! I DID NOT! I WOULD NEVER DO THIS!” Her screaming reverberated the small elevator, it was deafening.

“Calm down. Calm down. Where do we need to go?”

“Uhh… uhh…” The elevator doors opened. Ali darted around them, to the back of the reception, and opened the doors. She hadn’t even checked if there was anybody on those farther armchairs in the lobby, just kept following him. They passed through a modest hallway used by staff, and soon exited out the back doors, where Ali opened his Maglev and lowered Loki inside. She gave him the address for Gullveig’s shop, and they flew there, with Teuta raising Loki’s eyelids to check on his pupils, and squeezing his artery, noticing the steady beat slowing down.

“Hurry, please!”

He increased the speed. They flew beyond the speed limit now, with Teuta’s non-stop panting and opening her backpack to check, for the umpteenth time, if she had any medicine there. She didn’t. When they arrived, Ali helped her pull the unconscious body out.

Gullveig’s doors flew open, she was in a nightgown, frowning.

“I fucking knew it. Dumb idiots. Give him to me.”

She grumbled, flicking her wrist to carry his body inside like it was a piece of delicate paper. The doors closed. Teuta turned to Ali.

“I… I am in a very dangerous line of work. This is all… thank you. Thank you so much. If, if it’s possible, may I ask you not to-“

“It’s alright. You’re not the first person I’ve helped. I will expect a payment.”

“How much?”

“A million units.”

“Of course. Make it, uh… make it into a cost and put it on my tab.”

“The queen of Asgard will pay me?”

“She will. Ali, thank you. If possible, don’t alert the authorities and I will give you half a million more.”

He nodded, cocking his head.

“Miss Litentyv, you are very interesting.”

“So are you, it seems. I have to go.”

“Of course. Washing of this suit will be on your room.”

She didn’t answer, only knocked on the doors as the Maglev crackled and flew behind her, the speed of it raising the back of her hair.

The doors cracked slightly opened, and she pushed them all the way, entering inside. Gullveig’s makeshift shop was now more lit than before, so Teuta could see it all: three shelves of those jars, containing so much, on the right wall. A bed in the centre, propped up by heavy stone blocks. The two windows on the left wall, which also contained the bronze doors, were shut, with wooden panels, and curtains over them which changed colours; as did the curtain to her private room – still a dark eggplant violet. There was a stain on it – from when she accidentally smudged her elbow tattoo on it.

Finally, her eyes landed on Loki. Gullveig attached her golden hued tubes to him, to the inside of his elbows, for his wrists were torn open. She threw Teuta’s bloodied bandages on the floor and started dousing the gashes with a pinkish fluid, which made them sizzle and smoke. Teuta winced at the hissing sound.

“What, this is too much for you? You don’t like the sound of flesh being burnt? How about flesh being torn opened? That was pretty as a lilting piano melody?”

“I… I haven’t…” Teuta shook her head, for Gullveig whipped her hair and glared at her, her eyes now a very, very angry orange, her pupils burning black slits.

“Did you think his white skin looked immaculate, billowing open and giving way to the gorgeously burgundy meat within? And the way his body longed to come forward to you, his lavish insides hiding their intricate secrets beneath layers of tissue and blood… as he puked the lining of his stomach out? Did you want to hear that lustful sound of a gurgle as his skin gives way to your blade and delicately unravels before you? Are you your mother’s wild daughter?”

Teuta was horrified, she kept shaking her head, before finally grabbing her hair and screaming.

“NO! NO! I DID NOT WANT THIS!” She fell to her knees, holding her own stomach lest she vomited as well. Gullveig stopped suddenly.

“Get up. Get up, you stupid girl.”

Shaking, barely able to will her knees from their bent position, Teuta righted herself and looked at Gullveig.

“I had to check. You must understand that I had to check. Ugh. So many questions. I’m going to sleep.”

“But… but what about him?”

“He’ll be fine. That little boy on the bed is a fucking god. Beats me. Stay by his side.”

Gullveig kept mumbling to herself as she disappeared behind the dark curtain. There was one thought on Teuta’s frail mind now: she asked a question and Gullveig allowed it. She pulled up a chair and sat down, observing him. His skin was dirty. Teuta got up and walked to the limestone sink, grabbing a towel and dousing it with clean water. She placed it aside and washed her hands first.

Standing next to him, she wiped the stains from his arms and each of his long, elegant fingers, very, very slowly. Then she dabbed his chest clean. Looking around herself, she saw the roll of clean gauze bandage. Teuta bit her lip and looked on. There was the disinfectant, unnecessary now, because Gullveig seemed to have done that already. She scanned the shelves. There was the ground centella, turmeric, ginkgo, burdock, marigold. And more. All that she needed to make an ointment. And she rolled up her sleeves, sighed, and got to work.

It provided a clear course of concentration, as always. Before she wanted anything else, Teuta knew healing calmed her.

It had something to do with trying to right the wrongs she was forced to watch at such a young age. Like a hungry puppy, the little girl had absorbed the knowledge of medicine, storing it in her mind.

Maybe under other circumstances, she might have become a healer.

Carefully she cleansed his skin, applied the powder and the ointment, and wrapped it in clean bandages. She drained the towel, hanged it over the railing beside the window and took another one. With lukewarm water and the soft cotton she cleansed his throat and wiped his lips, very cautiously, so as to not wake him up. She let out a soft breath she’d been holding, thinking about his mother. And the way she talked about her child, with love and care. The way she would be completely torn and heartbroken to have learned of what Teuta has done to him.

The queen gave her so much, hoping she would help her find him.

This was no way to repay that woman. By mangling her child. Wiping a tear out of her eye, she traced the backs of her fingers across his lips.

“I am sorry.”

She said, falling back down into the chair. Teuta was furious with the way he betrayed her. It was hard reaching that anger inside herself now, where there was a layer of acidic guilt.

Still, while he was laying on that bed, she would get Gullveig to get her goddamned magic back and be done with this whole thing. Tell Loki his mother wants to see him. Give him the dragon.

Teuta opened her backpack and took the statuette out. She smiled, observing the tiny wrong lines, before darting her eyes at him. He did this. Back when he was a child. Carefree. Not a liar, or a betrayer, but a mere child. She imagined that golden queen caressing his silken hair and kissing him on his forehead. A mother that loved her child. Teuta gulped another tear back and placed the dragon back into her backpack.

Worn out, she leant her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes for just a tiny, tiny second. She fell asleep.

Chapter Text

On the other hand, Gullveig’s dream was a memory. She was a teacher back on Asgard, drawing the potential out of the queen’s adopted son. His genealogy allowed unpredictable things to occur at a very early age. And he was just a little boy, prone to mischief and those sweet little childish spites. Barely up to her waist, with huge, hungry green eyes. She had taught him the art of moving things with his mind, and he immediately went over to scare his brother’s friends into fits of crying. His mother had scolded him, and his conscience had caused him to do something impossibly stupid: he cut his own hair, unevenly, just to spite his parents. Gullveig tried to ease the situation and dragged him away to her study to talk to him. He disappeared for a few brief minutes, before returning with his hair having one long, wavy strand on the right side of his head, prickly irregular needles and locks on the left, a badly shaven strip down the middle of his upper scalp… and a teensy bouquet of irregular wild flowers, telling her she was his favourite teacher, because she taught him powerful things. In his tiny, sweet voice. …Nobody had ever given Gullveig flowers. Not Odin, not even before they were fucking; and certainly not Frigga, not even after the two of them were fucking.

Teuta brought in that little boy, torn open and dying. She’d seen this before, when she glimpsed the future – but it had hurt no less because of that. This ridiculous, desperate, and troubled human was his companion, for better or for worse. It had taken Gullveig a great deal of restraint not to hurt the child of the woman who mutilated her. Oh yes. She knew Teuta’s mother quite well. And this… progeny, this fucking progeny of that darkness was now asleep on the chair, next to her child, her boy, her smart little student. Gullveig took a look at Loki. He looked healthy;l she smiled. Of course he would recover soon. And his wounds… were bandaged. Frowning, she lifted the gauze and sniffed the ointment. Her eyebrow shot up and she looked at Teuta. Clever little bitch. Sneering, she poured a bucket of water and splashed it over Teuta, who jumped up, gasping for breath, entirely confused, spitting and coughing. Gullveig laughed heartily.
“What the fuck?!” Teuta yelled, moving wet hair from her face. “What is wrong with you?”
Gullveig slapped her cheek for asking the question.

“Ehehehe.”

Teuta tried regaining her balance when she heard his chuckle.
“She always starts with the left one. Always. But you deserved that.”
Teuta looked at him, now fully frozen.
“Are… are you… Uhh, good morning.”
“Good morning, my devious little human.”
“Loki, I hadn’t known, I swear to God, I hadn’t known; I thought those were the immobilizing ones!”
“Which god?”
“What?”
“Which god do you swear on?”
He squinted at her. She shook her head, annoyed.
“Loki! I am sorry, I am trying to apologise!”
“You’re forgiven. Gullveig, get these out of me.” He said, ripping the tubes out, before observing his bandaged wrists. “Hmm, I still have unimpeded circulation; these are not as tight as they normally are.”
“Your torturer tied those,” Gullveig said, her arms crossed over her chest.

Loki looked at Teuta.  “You helped me?”
“I… did what I could after… Gullveig, I’m not a torturer! Stop saying that! You don’t know what that means!” Teuta glared at her, delivering the silent message of you know who is a real torturer, I heard you mentioning her.
“Trust me, little girl, I most definitely goddamn do.” Gullveig glared back at her. Loki squinted, seeing it.
“Anybody want to tell me what that is about?” Loki asked, looking at Gullveig. She lifted her ringed hand to strike him, but Teuta’s anger and worry surged through her, making her impossibly fast as she caught the witch’s hand mid-air, her claws out.
“He’s been through enough.”
Loki looked at Teuta with slightly opened mouth, letting out a tiny gasp, blinking. Gullveig noticed this, and rolled her eyes, retreating to lean against the sink.

“Now, Loki, lay back down and give the magic back to Gullveig so I can settle this bloody fucking debt of mine,” Teuta said, adjusting her wet hair.
Loki looked at Gullveig, huffing, annoyed at her for keeping it from Teuta.
“He returned it. Whatever. Who gives a shit, anyway. It’s in the past.”
Teuta’s mouth hung open.
“You do realise we would not be in this bloody, literally, bloody mess if you had told me earlier?! Let me know somehow?!”
Teuta ducked the next swing, shivering with anger.
“Exactly, Teuta. Exactly. Finally! Finally they’re starting to catch on! I swear on the Nine, if Thanos ever succeeds, there has got to be a number of smarter beings, because I’m starting to understand his madness…” She continued muttering to herself, going back to her private quarters behind the curtain.

“Are you alright?” Teuta asked, taking a step closer to him.
“Yes. Wounds should be healed by the end of the week.”
“Those wounds? Are you certain?”
“I am a god, my little human.”
“Loki… why didn’t you tell me you returned the magic?”
“I didn’t know whether you knew it or not. You might’ve wanted to torture me either way.”
“I would never do that. I just… I was angry. I just wanted to fight you.”
“I would win.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
He grinned at her.
“When did you return it?”
“Ahh. I rented that room at Tehran and took a shower, feeling a little icky with the poison in the magic. Or that could have been my conscience. I don’t know, I can never tell the difference. Anyway, I took a lovely stroll down here and gave it back. And I asked her to tell you that I had saved you.”
“Saved me?”
“Well, your Kreean blood trick wouldn’t have worked. And the Norns know how difficult other sorcerers are when faced with acquiring or losing magic.”
He sounded like himself again. It would’ve annoyed Teuta, but she was happy he sounded healthy. Gullveig returned, holding a leather wallet.
“Now that the kissy kissy making up is on the way, I am here to remind you my work is not done for free.”
“But… he was dying…” Teuta gasped incredulously. Loki sighed. Gullveig faked a contorted simper, nodding her head.
“Meh, death. Anyway, as I was saying – you owe me, sugar tits.”
She made a boobs squeezing motion in the air. Teuta’s lip quivered, before she tried speaking, only to be cut off.
“Boring, boring, boring. You’d make a beautiful little housewife with that slow mind and that eagerness to please your husband. Oh shut your mouth. You brought him in here, this one is on you. It is also on you, you complete idiot.” She pointed at Loki. “She almost took your life; therefore she owes you hers, obviously. The imbecility of it all consists of the fact the balance was tipped over. First one way, then the other. I tipped it the other way, multiple times. It is so hard, hard; putting up with you all retains my right of snatching the opportunity to rest like I should. You – weeping human, you owe Loki your life. And you – my witless mischievous majesty,” she bowed down deeply. “You owe me keeping that life alive. I need to go buy something to eat. I feel like eating something alive.” She continued blabbering, walking out of her shop.
“Is she… does she…” Teuta tried.
“Mad? Do that often? Yes. Ever since… certain things happened; she hasn’t been the same. I’m afraid her sanity is beyond help. However, that doesn’t free her from the burdens of Seeing. And demanding.”
“What does that all even mean?”
Loki now looked at her.
“It means I need to look after you.”
“No, no. You’ve… returned the magic, thank you, but that only means I’m free, and I have stuff to do.”
“What stuff? Where are we going?”
“Loki.”
“Teuta.”
She tapped her foot on the floor.
“If I run, you will chase after me, won’t you?”
“What was it that you said when we were having dinner? I will pursue you.”
Teuta sighed.
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
“What the fuck?!”
“That’s just how it is, my little human. No way around it. This is our debt.”
He said, standing up and buttoning his stained shirt. Taking the first step forward, he faked a little weak wobble. She caught him immediately.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Must be the blood loss. I need food.”
“Alright. Umm, I can go buy something. We should go back to the hotel. Well, I should. You should wait.”
“Why?”
“Ah, well, umm, you bled everywhere, and this receptionist helped me?”
“Which one? The dark one? The one who touched you?”
She looked at him.
“Yes. Ali. And I paid him for silence.” Your mother paid him for silence, Teuta thought, deciding it was best to deal with this whole thing one discussion at a time. She had also decided that the best course of action would be to put up with him until he fell asleep or something, and then she could run. And that that’s why she was staying – most definitely not because that lean body she had her arms around needed looking after, or that it was attached to that beautiful face of his.

They exited the shop.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
She disentangled her arms, now putting them in the pocket of her trousers, realising her face and sweater were still wet, and the dried blood stains were not going anywhere.
“I need to change clothes. So do you. Are your things there?”
They walked through the market, with the people eyeing their appearance.
“No, there’s nothing in that room which would imply my staying there. Naturally. I keep my things in the pocket universe.”
“Except for your scent… Wait, pocket universe?”
“What scent?”
“The sheets are covered in your scent, genius. What is a pocket universe?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. You were in my room?” He grinned, before nodding to himself. “Right. You were gone for slightly too long. Hmm… the window? What an agile little spy.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, smiling down at her. She removed it and walked on.

“What is my scent?”
She kept silent, walking on out of the confines of the cramped market. He kept smiling, not noticing the perimeter set around the edges of the rich old centre of Shangri-La. Teuta stopped in her tracks, placing a hand on his torso.
“Do you see that?”
He looked around to view the armed guards in their silver uniforms, with vision enhancing goggles. There was a Maglev unit parked farther away. It was the Centauri.
“What are they doing here?” she whispered, and Loki pulled on her hand, dragging her back into the market. Now they saw them everywhere, creeping behind stalls and patrolling the outskirts of the fish stands.
“Are they looking for us?”
“There’s too many, I don’t think so.”
“Well, if you haven’t had orgies with loud mouthed whores, they wouldn’t be here!”
Teuta said, slipping behind the tarpaulin of a fruit stand. He followed her.
“Or maybe, just maybe, if you haven’t been all sensitive and lovable with the receptionist who most definitely ratted you out-“
“He didn’t. And I wasn’t. And it’s none of your business.”
Teuta looked around, before noticing an elderly woman selling Kylosian fruit. She walked to her.
“I need to get out of here.” She said, hugging her. The woman kissed her forehead and parted the curtain where there was an opening in the floor, where the wooden boards surrounded something akin to an opening for the mining shaft. Loki frowned, before following her.
“Who is that?”
“An old friend. Hurry, you idiot!”
“How do you know it wasn’t your receptionist?”
“Ali was compensated. He was obviously a messenger, even though I didn’t notice it at first. Sloppy. But he was compensated.”
“How much?”
“A million and a half.”
“Where did you get that kind of money?”
Teuta was silent as they walked through the underground tunnel, lit by the tiny light of the scarce LED lamps.
“What is this tunnel?”
“It’s just a tunnel. What, do you think the Andromedans don’t have secrets?” She smirked at him. He frowned, disappointed with himself for not having knowledge of this sooner. Teuta then stopped in front of him, where the tunnels forked.
“Now, I need to go to visit another friend. You can go wherever you want. We’re now below the eastern exit.”
He sighed and cocked his head, bearing an annoyed expression.
“Fine. I had to try,” Teuta finished and took the left tunnel. “When we get there, don’t talk, please.”
“What do you mean, don’t talk? I am a god, you can’t order me around.”
“This is my territory, I make the rules here, you can either come along or fuck off out of my life.”
“Well if you hadn’t mauled me, we wouldn’t be here.”
“If we weren’t here, we’d be getting arrested back in that hotel.”
“I still don’t think they were after us. Well, after you, maybe, but I had a very good cover.”
“Unbelievable…” she muttered, not wanting to indulge him. Behind her, he barely hid a grin. Her hair had half-dried, and was reflecting the LED light so beautifully he wanted to take a fistful of it and pull her back to his arms. When he woke up before, and she was spluttering water and gasping at Gullveig; all he saw at first was her fresh, wet face. If there was any justice in this horrid universe, she would have placed her palm on his cheek, leant down, and given him a full, soft morning kiss on his lips. It took a few seconds to be reminded of what she did. In her absolute anger, she acted like a maladroit vigilante and hurt him. The volumes of pain and regret in those eyes made her look like a painting of a troubled maiden. It certainly would have been easier if she was one, in a restraining dress, swooning before him, arching her back for him and yearning for him to taste her. He would feast. Alas, he was dealing with a stubborn, pertinacious, deadly beauty who could slip from his arms and jam her claws inside his lips when he tried to kiss her – by gods, there was only so much Loki could do not to spread her legs then and there.

Teuta stopped walking and reached one of the walls, looking up.
“Okay, here we are.”
There was only a faint crack of light surrounding the square wooden top of the exit above them. Teuta pushed her leg against the bare, stone wall and used the movement to hoist herself up where she could jam her claws into the plaster and lift her foot up on the irregular protrusion. The whole set of movements took barely a few seconds.
“Very agile.”
“Are you coming?”
She said, banging her fist on the wooden top once she reached it. Somebody lifted the hatch and an arm helped hoist her up through the opening. As Loki climbed, only a few tiny seconds slower than her, she looked down on him, holding the hatch. There was a smirk on her face.
“It’d be so easy…” she chuckled. He shook his head and climbed all the way up, entering. It was a small, shabby room. There were units full of different sorts of weapons – from different worlds. The floor was dusty. There were no windows, and the whole place seemed to be lit with exactly the same LED light as the tunnels were. Teuta was already hugging one of the creatures, a pink-hued Krylorian with a mohawk and at least fifteen piercings on his face.
“Where the fuck were you, Teuta?”
“Ahh, prison. It’s a long story, Salthan. It’s good to see you. How are you?”
“Good, babygirl, good. Not much has changed, except, of course, the newest Centauri bullshit.”
“What bullshit?”
“You don’t know? Come, we can’t talk here. Who is that?”
Loki caught the babygirl expression and frowned, his arms crossed over his chest.
“That’s my… assistant, Loki.”
“Assistant?” he asked, offended. “You owe me your life.”
Another creature gasped. It was a blue skinned Centaurian beauty, a young man with angelic curls and lashes that shone in the dusty lighting of the room.
“Loki? The Loki?”
“Yes.”
“It is… it is a great pleasure to meet you, my god.” He bowed down with a flourish. Loki looked at Teuta, nodding and pointing to the bowed man. She rolled her eyes.
“Rise, my child, rise.” He took his hands. The young man looked at his bandaged wrists.
“My god, what happened to you?”
“This woman tortured me.”
The man gasped and looked at Teuta with horror in his eyes.
“He deserved it.”
The man gasped again and covered his mouth.
“Shh. It is alright, my young one. She will learn. She will repent.” Loki caressed his cheek while the man looked lovingly up at him. Teuta looked at Salthan with a pleading expression. He chuckled and motioned for her to follow him.

“Who is that? Did you start taking apprentices?” she asked about Loki’s follower.
Salthan sighed.
“These days, we might need every able body.”
Loki looked around himself. They walked along a barren corridor to another room, lit, clean. There were three armed creatures by the doors, and he had to duck to walk through. It looked as if it was an elaborate hideout of a group of some sorts. Rebels? Loyalists? No, Teuta wouldn’t consort with them. It had to be a network of criminals. Most likely petty ones. Teuta wouldn’t consort with murderers. Maybe assassins, but never proper killers.
At the farther end of the room lined with cabinets and differently styled armchairs, most of them worn out, was a very large desk. Another Krylorian was sitting there, a very old woman with stern, rough movements.
“Teuta!” she yelled, rising from her chair, although with some effort.
“Oh, Lamaria! How I’ve missed you!” She ran into her arms, kissing her shoulder as she hugged her. Loki now knew where Teuta got her fake name from. Must’ve been some sort of honouring of this woman. He darted a look at his follower: the young man had his eyes plastered on Loki, observing every curve of his face. He smiled at him. The man beamed in return.

“Why were you in that awful place?” Lamaria shook her head at Teuta. “Did you… did Maw…”
“I… No. No. I managed to escape.”
“Fucking hell, you had me worried there. Rocket told me some of it. Xandar is full of his spies.”
“I know. I just… got sidetracked.”
“Stop drinking, Teuta. Stop it.”
Teuta smiled, nodding her head. Lamaria hugged her again, squeezing her. Loki frowned. Were they talking about Ebony Maw? What in all of the multiverse had Teuta gotten herself into? Lamaria looked over her shoulder at Loki. He straightened his face. She let go of Teuta and walked up to him, her chin proudly up.
“Hmm. A god?”
Loki frowned again.
“This is Loki, protector of the thieves,” the young follower added breathily.
“Ahh. Frigga’s son. I did wonder what the youngling giant looked like.” There was a dirty twinge to her grin as she eyed him, before looking back at Teuta.
“Why is he with you?”
“It’s a long story. There’s no time for that. Why is the old town riddled with Centauri guards?”
“Don’t you know? Didn’t you read the newspapers?”
“I was busy.”
“What about you, god?”
“She tortured me. I was unconscious.”
Teuta rolled her eyes. He really was going to be a bitch about it.
“Why? What did you do to her?”
“It’s a long story, like she said.” He smirked. “But I need to look after her.”
“Well, Teuta, you might need it.” She walked around her desk to open the newspapers and slam them down, pointing to a very, very long article.
“The Centauri law system are mobilising. Thanos is growing stronger. It doesn’t say here, but they fear the consequences and are forcing alliances under their rule. Extending the hunt, they are sending units throughout the quadrant, tracking down everyone who escaped. And the interesting new development says that the prisoners are free of their sentence if they undergo the volition lobotomy and serve for a century… OR IF they acquire minimum of the twenty-five million units and transfer them to the Gaol Bank in the next twelve months. It goes up with the weight of the crime.”
“What the fuck?”
“Thanos will make us into a very rich federation before he annihilates us, it seems.”
“He won’t win.” Loki spoke.
“From your lips…” Lamaria added, touching her forehead with her thumb.
“Wait, are you saying that the hunt is cancelled if they get the funds?” Loki spoke, snatching the papers and reading them.
“Guild-sanctioned units. Every single one.”
Teuta groaned, throwing her head back.
“That’s impossible!”
“That’s why there’s a perimeter around the Hall. Fugitives are lining up for the enrolment.”
“For slavery?”
“What is a hundred years compared to a life of not having to hide?”
“And the guards are there to make sure to explain the option to them. The only option you’ll be offered if they catch you and you don’t have thirty million units in your pocket,” Loki added. Lamaria pointed a finger at him and nodded.
“Told you they weren’t after us,” he said to Teuta. She sighed, shaking her head.
“But how are we supposed to find jobs worth… what… sixty million funds?” She asked, pointing to both Loki and herself.
“Thirty. For you. My lawyers will take care of my case in about five years. I just have to hide.”
“Of course they will. Fucking gods.”
“In any case-“ Lamaria started.

Teuta interrupted her and spoke to Loki. “You know what would be a really good way to look after me? Get those lawyers on my case.”
“Earning the units will be faster. Lamaria, I take it you are well-connected? Could you help contact the guild of thieves to get Teuta the quests?”
“I take it growing up as rich as you did skewered your perception of the worth of a job, or the weight in gold of hard ground work, but this is preposterous even for you, Loki. The highest paid job, after the fees and the monthly participation is covered is what… around two million? And a job of that worth would consist of incredibly difficult things, not to mention is very fucking rare to come by?”
Teuta said, waving her hands in front of his face.
“And from more than one guild, surely. Will you be helping her?” Lamaria asked Loki.
“You’re not serious?” Teuta asked her.
“It’s hard, but not impossible. You can do anything, my darling Teuta,” she said, caressing Teuta’s face with both of her hands.
“Lamaria…”
“Teuta. Listen to me. You have to get the Centauri off your trail. They have your imprint, they’ll find you eventually. I have no idea how you got yourself into partnership with a god, but be clever, dear girl, don’t succumb to whatever animosity you feel towards him. Remember the heist of Grand Bazaar? Now, what you could have done if you had a blessing of the god of thieves-“
“You know I don’t do that-“
“No matter. What would happen if you had a sorcerer shielding you from that impact? You’d be sitting on those units instead of getting ransomed off. You wouldn’t have that mistake on your resume. Be wise, Teuta. You’re still young, but this universe is full of traps. I know you know it, so take what you can when you can. The alternative is escaping endlessly, hiding, until you lose your mind, end back up in Tungsten A, sitting duck.”

Teuta listened to her, roaming her wrinkled face. After few moments of silence, she sighed, knowing the old woman was always right.
“Goddamn it,” she said, turning around, placing her hands on her hips and sighing heavily.
“Good. Now where is this guild? Let’s go get the highest paying job,” Loki spoke arrogantly. Teuta rolled her eyes, and Lamaria started laughing.
“I like him,” Lamaria said, squinting at him. “You haven’t actually been to one of the guilds?”
“Well, no, but I feel like I should have some manner of influence there, no?”
“You really did grow up in a palace, didn’t you? Ahh, you’ll learn. There is a good side to this. You’re powerful, you’re resourceful, you’re beautiful; you’ll make a fine thief yet.”
“I’ll have you know I single-handedly robbed half of that palace when I was only a child.”
“And your punishment was a stern finger wag and a month of no playing with your friends?”
Loki was silent.
“Have you seen Rocket?” Teuta asked, wanting to stop the annoying discussion.
“No, but Salthan has. He’s around Xandar, fetching something for the Sovereign. You know he’s obsessed with that technology. Beats me.”
“Oh god, not that business again. The fool will get himself captured.”
“He’ll find a way out.”
“Yeah. Do you have any clothes for me? I reek of blood. And for him.”
“Not necessary. I have mine with me.”
“Well, change then. You stink,” Teuta told him, before Lamaria took her hand and led her to another room. Loki stayed there.
“My god, do you need me to clean you? We don’t have a suitable bath, but I will be honoured to wash you,” The young follower said, his eyes glinting with desire.
“That will not be necessary, my dear. Do you have a shower here?”
“Yes, my god. Follow me,” he spoke, with a hint of sadness in his eyes. Loki held back a grin and followed him.

When they met again, back in the larger room, they were alone. Nobody accused anyone of stinking anymore. Teuta was silent as a tomb, trying not to react to one of the hottest outfits she had ever seen: Loki’s hair was clean, in a long braid down his back, a few shorter strands framing his face. That was a fucking painting. He had black tight leather trousers on, interwoven with diagonal straps from his boots to his knees, hugging those incredible thighs of his. A small part of her regretted his manhood was covered by the triangular flap of his sleeveless wool tunic: there was a tight sleeve peeking out of the protective layer: he must’ve had a thin, no doubt comfortable skin tight black shirt underneath it. And the tunic was emerald green, wider, with layers, buttoned on his right shoulder so it had an elegant fold of fabric below his neck. It was cinched with a wide dark golden belt which appeared a mixture of metal and leather. No doubt actual gold.
“Great, let’s announce your arrival wherever we go. Very smooth, Loki,” she said, avoiding another set of thoughts. He chuckled, approaching her and brushing his fingers down her cheek as he ogled her. Underneath the heavy dark grey wool cape which wrapped over her like a poncho he could see very thick, sturdy, and tight leggings which looked like black suede, although it was most likely something which can withstand an encounter with a blade. He had no idea what laid over her breasts, for it was fully hidden by that warm cape. Her beautiful hair was tamed in a swirl which rested on the back of her head, pinned by sharp little needles. Undoubtedly useful needles.
“Don’t worry about my sneaking, my beautiful human.”
She huffed and moved away from him.
“I’ll have to ask you to cease this behaviour if we’re to work together. Now, that pocket universe of yours, can I store something there?”
“Certainly, you can ask whatever you require of me.”
She opened her backpack and started throwing stuff out of it. Silver daggers. A tiny Arab dagger. Needles with handles. A pair of standard issue tungsten cuffs (no magic there, no thank you), a cap, a beanie, hair clip – an elaborate one, made of ivory. Loki took it in his hands, observing the fine material.
“Do you wear this? This is expensive.”
“Yes. That goes in the pocket. Don’t lose it, please.”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
“Loki…”
“What else? The daggers? Give them to me.”
Teuta observed the items disappearing from his hands, enveloped by the emerald light. She wondered if this was a good idea. He wanted to take the vibranium knives from her, but she stopped him.
“No. They stay with me. I’ve grown quite attached to them.”
She put them underneath her cape, obviously attaching their sheathes to a belt, and taking her now lighter backpack in her hands.
“Let’s go eat something, I’m hungry,” Teuta said, and he followed her to another room, obviously the one for socialising, as there were long wooden tables with long benches to be shared. Much like his father’s hall in the palace. Air was filled with a wonderful scent of roasted food and the sweetness of liquors. A few people pulled on Teuta’s shoulder, banging their palms on her back and hugging her. She was laughing and joining in the hugs. These were her friends, Loki realised. Her underground, spying and thieving friends of all sorts. She seemed happy, laughing gleefully. Loki wondered if she would ever greet him like that, share that earnest laugh with him. Frowning, he looked around himself and decided to sit down at the table and pour himself some ale. It was good ale, and he nodded to himself as he enjoyed the flavour. The farther end of the hall was filled with various creatures trying to get the roast done faster. His table was empty, there was nobody around him. He took to viewing the various tapestries on the wall: seeing mythology from the worlds he visited, small, not professionally done depictions of the Shiva from Midgard, the Xandarian lion-king, Krylorian octopus-princess, mother of their race.

Teuta finished greeting her friends: the few people who knew how to hide very well so as to not reveal their friendship lest her mother finds out and decides to rip it from the root; all the while drinking mead and laughing. She would have given anything to be able to stay there. She’d scrub the toilets if necessary. But no. The worm of the doubt inside her kept eating away at her flesh and forcing her to part ways with them, to keep them safe. There was that slight pain of nostalgia as she looked around herself, her first real home, when Lamaria took her in and gave her a bed and a meal. She was an uncontrolled, angry teenager back then. And she found her purpose here. Lamaria always took in creatures of potential to keep her little organisation alive and prospering, and Teuta’s extensive training certainly made her a really, really good asset. She gulped down her mead, already feeling the mellowing in her brain. She could allow herself to get looser here, where she was safe. At least for this night, before the new, dangerous part of her life began.
It was good. It was good that this was happening, because it would certainly keep her from going back to that dark place in her mind, the helplessness, the inevitability of the deadly fear. And that sweet, mellifluous call of true death, the only thing which could beyond any doubt free her from the wild hunt that was always edging closer to her.

Suddenly, she remembered Loki’s speech. She wondered if he meant any of it… because those lustrous, impossibly vast things he spoke of created a feeling inside her – he made her feel like a child first faced with the extent of the cosmos, hungry and yearning and in awe. Could he harbour that inside himself? Is that what he wanted, truly?
She was leaning her elbows against the bartop of the makeshift bar they had there, and turned around to look at him. He was sitting alone, spinning his ale mug in his hands and tracing the patterns with his nails. He seemed bored. It made her smile. Good. She shook the smile off and turned back to the bar to ask for more mead, and by the time she wanted to dart a look at Loki again there was somebody sitting down next to him. It was one of the oldest spies here, Merak, a Xandarian with a long beard and a scar on his face. Quite menacing and large, he somehow always managed to be incredibly silent and efficient. There was a roar of laughter from him as Loki said something.
“Everyone! Teuta’s new friend is none other than Loki of Asgard!”
A loud holler of surprise tore through her as she observed all of her friends walking to the table and sitting down to take a better look at a god. Teuta was now alone by the bar, leaning against it and sighing, not wanting to look anymore. Behind her, there was yapping and yak, chortling and slamming of the wooden mugs against the table as Loki told endless stories of his journeys, entertaining everyone. His young follower, the beautiful boy, kept bringing him ale and everything else he required.
He enjoyed the lavish attention, so much so that he entirely relaxed, getting drunk, even sang an Asgardian song. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it, so why not? He looked at Teuta, alone by the bar, avoiding him. She shed her cape, putting it over a chair, and now he could see the tight black shirt of the same material as her trousers, hugging her. Around her torso was a light absorbing metal breastplate, blacker than the night, making her waist seem even narrower. Her long, long legs flowed all the way down where she hoisted one sturdy boot over the leg of the high stool, swinging it back and forth.
“She’s the most troubled creature I’ve encountered in my two hundred and fifty years of thieving,” Merak said, inviting Loki’s attention. “She might have wrapped those chains around your wrists and torn that godly skin, but that girl has a soft heart. Too soft. She’d risk her life for anyone. Undoubtedly, she will risk it for you at one point. And if you ever betray her, my god, I will kill you. I will find your family and I will murder all of them.”
Loki realised there was a tip of a dagger resting on his crotch. He gulped and nodded. Merak suddenly smiled and raised his voice, sheathing his dagger and clapping.
“Another song!”
Loki immediately began singing happily.

The merriment lasted for hours before the majority of the hammered creatures retreated to their quarters. There seemed to be a sort of a bet between Loki and Teuta, where nobody wanted to approach the other one first. People went back and forth to converse and to drink and to dance. But never the two of them.
Finally, as the hall got emptier, Teuta couldn’t hold it anymore. She rose from her stool and went over to him. Wobbling slightly on the way, feeling like any extra movements would turn into a dance she avoided for too many hours, she approached him. He smiled at her, opening his palm to invite her to sit down.
“I see you’re having a good time with my friends.”
“They like me.”
Teuta sat down with both of her legs on either side of the bench that had no back rest, and was leaning on her forearm on the table, staring at him with a drunken little mischievous expression. Loki was pleased to have won this round, and he licked the insides of his teeth while observing her mellowed face.
“They do, it seems, though I cannot for the life of me understand why. Don’t the fools know how easily a god of mischief deceives?”
“Are they fools for taking their happiness and pleasure when it is right in front of them?”
“Yes. There are always consequences.”
“Verily so. But what is a non-existent, well in the future consequence in the face of the sheer joy of being drunk? Isn’t that so, Teuta?”
She chuckled, sliding even more down on her forearm.
“Aren’t you drunk?”
“No. Alcohol doesn’t affect me,” he said with a straight, serious face. She burst into loud laughter and hid her own face in the crook of her elbow, before looking back at him.
“That is a load of bullshit, Loki.”
“But it made you laugh, my little human.”
She groaned like a toddler, slouching and placing her palms on the bench in front of her crotch.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m your pet.”
“I never meant it like that.”
She got closer to his face, leaning on her hands. He could see her face was flushed, she was so adorable it made him smile and give her a quick peck on her lips. She might’ve avoided it, given her fast reflexes, if she wasn’t so drunk. Or wanting.
“Hey!”
He chuckled. There was that something in the extremely gentle way he smiled at her, or in the flicker of the candle light on his eyelashes. Or, in that glassy coat over his eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, placing a palm over his entire face and turning his head to the side. He laughed loudly. He wrapped his fingers around her arm and removed it slowly. She looked at his bandages.
“Those need changing. I’ll do it tomorrow, I’m way too drunk now. I’m going to bed.”
She got up, sighing.
“Teuta?”
“Yes?”
“Where am I sleeping?”
“Ask your follower. He arranged quite a cozy bed for you. Idiot.”
She started walking away.
“Teuta?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for this. Your friends are truly hospitable people. I feel extremely grateful.”
“You’re welcome. Go to sleep, we have a long journey ahead of us.”
She reached the doors of the hall, when he called her name one more time. She chuckled and turned around:
“Yes?!”
“Good night.”
She shook her head, without losing her smile, and walked out.

Chapter Text

Barely managing to peel off her breastplate and tight clothes, Teuta snuggled on the familiar hard mattress of her old room, feeling secure and relishing that feeling: for she knew how rare it was; going out like a brick.

Loki sighed upon laying down, placing his forearm behind his head. The young man had given him his own bed and gone to share one with a fellow thief. It didn’t take much insisting for Loki to accept it. Just the standard few “I couldn’t possibly”, “You went out of your way and I cannot”, “I would feel guilty”, followed by the “To have followers of this immense generosity is a blessing unto itself”, as he slowly closed the doors to lose sight of those large, hopeful eyes. No, he wasn’t going to invite him in. Loki had no willpower, no desire, no strength to deal with admiration now. Or sex. Not even if his own sex was working, which it wasn’t still. A few twitches and that inexplicable ooze of fire down its length when he feasted on Teuta’s own desire, magnified by that feeling of possibly losing her… Thinking on it now, he’d never experienced anything similar. Things were happening too fast and too intently for him to truly stop and think for a moment.
But now, in the silence of this underground chamber, he recalled what happened in the hotel: the pull of his spirit, his godly essence lilting up, trying to overcome the impervious pit of despair he looked down on when he saw that look in her eyes. And when he kissed her, truly kissed her, trying to drink it out of her shivering lips, her dripping soft cunt, through her syrupy wet – he was so desirous, so truly, benumbingly turned on he thought he would either burst his seed then and there, or tear her open and wring it out of her. And from that feeling the fiery, pointed sensation of something tearing through the hilt of his cock began. Either poison, or acid, or something entirely else. Loki had no answer to what it was. And he would’ve asked Gullveig, but, but… Teuta was there. The last ounce of pride he still possessed: even though he was strangely enchanted by this human woman, he was still a god, an old and experienced god who had seen so much and been through so much and he was damned if he was going to let this infatuation annihilate that last ounce of dignity. After all, all others come and go, but he remains, empty and disastrous. Powerful.

Loki had no idea when he fell asleep, but he woke up strangely refreshed, considering this excuse for a bed Teuta’s friends rested on. The freshness allowed for few sane decisions: he was not going to lose himself in this pursuit. He was not going to demean himself to gain what little affection she was apparently refusing to give. He was going to allow her to realise on her own that she is his subject and his worshipper. Yes. Good, sane decisions.
He got up and washed his face, re-braided his hair and made sure it looked immaculately attractive, with a few strands loose and the girth of it soft and light-catching. Like the god that he was.

There was no sign of his follower upon walking the corridor to Lamaria’s office or whatever that room was, and Loki didn’t like it. He needed that little bit of reassurance in his station. Entering, he saw Teuta was there, and so were a few other of her friends; all standing over a large map spread on the table.
They looked at him when he entered, but paid no real attention, only nodding in greeting and continuing to stare at the map.
“Is there any coffee around here?”
Teuta pointed to the top of the small cabinet on the right without looking at him. He took a dirty cup, frowning, and poured himself a bit of the lukewarm fluid. They must’ve been here for some time.
“No other way, really. At least not until the majority of it dies down.”
“What is going on?” Loki asked, approaching.

Teuta looked at him and spoke. “We have to evade the Centauri. Word is they’re scouring the cities. Yes, we need to reach the guild in Byzantium, there is apparently a lucrative mission, but we’ll have to go through the country. Are you used to walking such distances in your godly boots?”
“I walked for three sunrises and sunsets over a mountain in Jotunheimr, little girl.”
“Hmm.”
“I did.”
He had a stern expression on his face, some of the haughtiness she used to see while they were in prison, before… well, before he had a lustful expression.
“Alright. So, through the Singhnagi and the Tbilisian plains… Ahh. I haven’t done it in a long time.” She spoke to Lamaria. The old woman nodded, patting her shoulder.
“Take everything you need. The boots are new, they’ll last you some time. Are you sure you don’t want another breastplate?”
“No, this is my lucky one.”
“Teuta, that thing is ancient. You need protection. You, god prince, you better protect her or I’ll track you down. I’ll track down everyone you ever loved. You may not think much of me in this old body, but I assure you, I command a force that will rip you to shreds.”
“Lamaria… I can protect myself.”
“I agree. Teuta’s life is worth more than you think it is. If you allow harm to come to her-” Salthan added.
“You’ll what? Kill me? Slice me open and send my heart to my family? Evidently, there’ll be a line. Merak already threatened me. Judging by that scar on his face, he’s been through hell to acquire it.”

Teuta laughed loudly. “No, he got that scar because he got too drunk, fell down the stairs and landed on his dagger. But please, stop it. You won’t get rid of me that easily,” she added, smiling at Lamaria. The old woman took her face into her hands and kissed her forehead, whispering a blessing in her native tongue and swiping it with her thumb.
Loki felt a shiver run around his kidneys. It was an invocation to him. He looked down to the floor in respect to the prayer, slowly, before lifting his eyes and nodding at Lamaria.
“Put all of these things in that pocket of yours, please.” She started handing him extra items of clothing, various little boxes, and two sandwiches with cheese.
“No food.”
“Why not?”
“Ants.”
Teuta laughed again. He smiled, watching her cheeks tighten and get plump with the chuckle.
“Alright. Is the other one for me? I’m hungry.”
“Yes. You should save it for later, I made them just in case; we’ll walk faster if we’re walking to a full hot meal. Maybe burn some of these calories from yesterday off.”
Salthan made a joke about Teuta being fat, and they started pushing each other around playfully, but Loki watched the sandwich, thinking about how she’d made it for him. Those simple, probably bland few slices of their home baked bread, and some stolen cheese. The poorest meal anybody had ever made for him.
Since he was a small child, he had been used to lavish suppers, smorgasbord luxuries for quick bites between meals, and elaborately nutrient breakfasts. Even in exile, even in the frozen caves of Jotunheimr, dirty hangovers on Sakaar, shit little Xandarian motels; he always had hearty meals and a hearty appetite. Princesses, kings, head sorcerers, ambassadors and generals had made food for him: those uselessly prepared expensive plates of delicacies from their home worlds straight to the bed in which he’d fucked them the prior night.
Not one of those foods had ever caused a reaction in him like this irregularly cut, jumbled little sandwich wrapped in cheap waxed cloth. He gulped, opening it with unusually unsteady hands… and then stopped, wrapping it back up; for later.
“Geez, you’ll squish it, why are you holding it so tightly?” She frowned, trying to get the plump back into the crumb over the cloth, and when she was satisfied, she packed them up.

Something started stirring inside his self-awareness. Loki stood still, completely missing the heartfelt goodbyes and the few shed tears from her closest friends. He got ready without really thinking about it, greeting some new acquaintances and adjusting his belt. He wanted to get going already, away from the noise and the people. There was that dreaded feeling of wanting complete isolation appearing at the edges of his senses, so he tried shutting everything out and droning on.
When he realised he hadn’t spoken in a while, they were already well on their way, out of the tunnels, past the borders of Shangri-La, and approaching the outskirts of the vast fields of wheat. The heat was gone, so the sun slowly rising didn’t scorch the weary travellers. It was now what was on Midgard (and Asgard) known as Autumn. The harsh Andromedan colds were yet far away. Loki found himself craving it: this state of hibernating sensations, the pull back, observation, maturity into a hermit-like state of mind which would be perfectly accompanied by his true form. Upon that first clean scent of ice in the air, upon the first gust of darker winds, he will climb on the topmost spot wherever he will be, strip down to nothing and let the Jotunn rime flow out of the inside of the veins whose lining hid it, guarding the dormant molecules like petals protecting the sensitive heart of a flower. He will let himself grow as dark blue as a sunless sky above his biological home and as cold as the hearthless cave deep in its mountains.

“Are you coming?” Teuta’s voice echoed in the frost of his mind. He opened his eyes, realising he was standing still in the middle of the field, while she was ahead. He nodded, and she turned back around, continuing her steady pace. The sun slowly made the colours glisten, and her hair would make her inconspicuous if she were laying in this wheat, for it was the same, Loki noticed. Still caught in that swirl on the back of her head, it was slowly becoming looser, and the few strands floating sideways in the light breeze looked like blades of that grass they were treading. He continued walking behind her, observing her entire form. With no desires in that moment, he just followed, like a silent echo of a usually much more babbling man.

It started to make Teuta uncomfortable: when they started their journey, breathing in clean air after the stuffy underground, she was immensely grateful that he didn’t just continue talking and nagging her. It was soothing. Both of them quite good at not making sounds, they were as quiet as this breeze, smoothing through the sunlit fields like dark spectres. After a while, he started falling behind, standing still every few steps, inching further the distance between them until finally she couldn’t feel his presence anymore. Turning around, she saw him standing as still as a statue, his head lolled backwards, face starkly lit by the sunlight, in all of its ivory glory, bones like blades, lips like thin strips of pink marble: only his hair reflected back the light, swaying and shivering around his head. Teuta sighed at the sight, staring for a while, before rousing him from whatever was going on in that head of his.
Now uncomfortable, she thought of the last time the two of them sneaked through the tall grass: he had betrayed her. She looked at him, for he was now by her side again.
“Loki?”
“Hmm?”
“As much as I appreciate respite from your lying tongue, the last time you were this quiet you… left me there on that planet. Are you planning on doing that now?”
Now he turned his head and looked at her. His eyes were strangely pale, almost verging on grey. She frowned.
“I don’t think I am. Not now,” he replied in a completely emotionless voice.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it says.”
“Well, uhh, whoopie. Umm, I do have stuff in that pocket of yours, so… I don’t want to see them gone.”
He stopped, taking her hands in his.
“Relax, please,” he spoke, before twirling his fingers above her palms, gracefully, when a green light enveloped them and Teuta felt a shadow of warmth inside her bones.
“There. Now you have access to it. Envision the item you need and grasp it.”

She closed her eyes and scrunched them up. It made him chuckle.
“You don’t have to try that hard.”
She opened one eye to squint at him, before one of her small needles appeared on her palm. She gasped like a child witnessing a miracle, and he laughed again. It felt like an echo in his current state of mind, but it was definitely coming out of him.
“How do I put it back?”
“Just put it back.”
She placed the needle in the middle of her palm (which was unnecessary, and it made him shake his head while laughing) and nudged her head in its direction as if she was going to tell it to disappear. And it did.
“Ha!” was all she said.

Loki looked at her, frowning: he realised that, for the past decade of this apathy haunting him, he always wanted to be alone. First, he abandoned that wretched perversion, then he abandoned his friends, then he severed the connection to his mother. And brother. He roamed the starkest wilderness and found the darkest corners of the planets, all in the effort to get away from life, from voices, from the scents and the heat of living creatures. He was swarmed with the unrelenting speed of life around him and he needed it to just stop so he could breathe. Never once had he laughed when he knew another bout was approaching. If he were near a creature, he’d just vanish, slither off somewhere to brood and try to empty himself.

Teuta was not bothering him.

He frowned and looked to the ground when they continued on their way. He could feel her presence, but she was not a distraction, not a disturbance. She was not messing with the delicate strands of his cobweb of silence and meditation. She was just there.
Even with her childish display of inexperience, he was not annoyed. Merely entertained. Endeared, even.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, after a while.
“You’re welcome.”
His voice was still very dispassionate. She darted a look at him here and there, seeing that thoughtfulness. His movements were different. He truly was like a creature of mythology now, merely dancing through the air, every speck on him like a glistening fabric of dreams. Teuta felt a tightening in her throat, her breathing slightly increased. She felt hungry for every part of him. Her chest felt hollow with the yearning and her cunt tightened around nothing.
This is not good, she thought, shaking her head at herself. It didn’t feel like that with her previous infatuations. She would feel horny, and playful, and downright embarrassingly demanding, but never like this: this was admiration. This was like the very core of her needed him to… to… anything, exist, touch her, hold her, stare at her with those eyes, talk. Talk. Talk.

“Ok, what is wrong with you?” She stopped, hands on her hips, and glared at him, more out of her own frustration and the inability to solve it. “You haven’t said a thing in hours. Hours. I doubt that ever happens to you.”
He said nothing, just cocked his head and observed her peacefully.
“Loki?”
“Come on, we need to reach the inn before dark,” was all he said, now walking in front of her. She huffed and ran on to reach him.

Soon, there was a roadside inn whose lights lit the way in the falling darkness, with the dusk behind them. Her feet were killing her, and she almost ran there, opening the creaky doors.
There were a few creatures in. Barely anybody looked at the two of them. Loki walked on and sat down at the farthermost table. She sat opposite him, sighing.
“I’m so tired…” She groaned, squeezing her leg muscles to massage them. The innkeeper approached them, and they ordered two large mugs of ale and whatever was on the menu today. Unless it was pork. Then just whatever else was left. She sipped on her ale, staring at him. He was fumbling with a loose strand from his shirt sleeve.
“Is my company so horrible?” she asked.
“No.”
“Your behaviour says otherwise. You’ve been gloomy and brooding and sulking and quiet all day.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“But you would prefer to be alone?”
He stopped, thinking about this question. Would he? Would he get rid of her and go somewhere to sit down in peace? He realised he didn’t mind. She was becoming like an actual companion on this newest adventure he embarked on.
“No, actually,” he said, a mild surprise painting his otherwise bland tone of voice.
“Why thank you, Your Grace,” she said sarcastically, with a flourish of her hand. The edges of his lips twitched with a potential smile. Her expression changed. “Loki. Are you alright?”

The innkeeper appeared, bringing their food and ending her question. She began gulping it down happily, eating much more quickly than him.
“I don’t care about the incoming comment on my eating,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m tired and I’m starving.”
“Of course, we’ve been walking all day.”
Teuta ate on, expecting the inevitable twist in his words, something mocking. It didn’t come. She threw her spoon down on the table.
“Alright. That’s it. What is up with you? You’re weird and I don’t like it.”

He chewed one of his last bites, washing it elegantly down with a polite sip of his ale, measuring his next words. He could’ve said a number of lies; such as that he reminisces an imagined trip from the past and it is making him nostalgic, or perhaps that he misses his family, or maybe even that he is simply tired, hasn’t slept well in that horrid bed and has a hangover. Instead, he inhaled deeply.

“I think I am depressed. It’s… I don’t know what else could feel like this.”
Teuta leaned back on her chair.
“Am… Is this trip making you feel like that?”
“No, my little human. No. I’ve been like this for over a decade.” He blankly stared at the table, arranging the breadcrumbs into a tiny pile with his forefinger. It felt extremely uncomfortable, pronouncing those words. He cringed at himself when he spoke them, immediately regretting it, and fearing the discussion that might follow. He had no will to rectify it anymore.
“Over a decade?” she asked quietly, remembering how he looked when she first saw him in prison.
“Yes.”
“Has anything caused it, do you know?”
“Life, I suppose. And the way I’ve been living it.”
She remembered Lorelei saying Loki got away from her sister, Amora, the witch. Thinking about what happened with them, but unable to ask, she thought on: to the women in his room at the Tehran Interversal. She’d seen that sort of gluttony before. In herself.
“You know, it’s only going to get worse if you keep piling it in a little corner in that pocket of yours and covering it up with a tarpaulin, and then going to indulge yourself furthermore. Believe me, I know.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing to yourself?”
“Yes, consistently. And when I have a moment of respite, you’ve seen what happens.”
He frowned, remembering how tired and afraid she looked back in the hotel. That caused a rising sensation in him.
“What happened to you, Teuta? Why are you anxious?”
She looked away, exhaling.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But here you are, asking questions about myself. And I’ve answered truthfully, which was, I’ll admit it, a surprise even to me.” He chuckled sadly. “This seems to be an ongoing thing between us, the god of mischief at his most honest, and you, the wronged party in this, full of secrets and hiding answers.”
“Well, I’ve learnt from the best of you.”
“The other Trickster gods? Who were the lesser variants of myself?”
“Just some idiots.”
“Ahh, you might be right about that. We truly are.”
She frowned. He hadn’t tried to assert his dominance. Maybe he really was depressed? The sad look in his eyes was making her chest tighten.
“I need some sleep. I’ll rent us two rooms; you can finish my meal if you want.”
He rose, and she remained suspended between a few thoughts, very surprised by the lack of the expected nagging and teasing her.
“Loki?”
“Yes?” He turned around. She walked up to him.
“I’m sorry you feel like this. If, uh, if you want to talk about it or something, I’ll be around. Obviously. For some time.”
She kneaded her fingernails into her palms. He felt warmth upon seeing it. His little human worried for him. He was beyond any help, but his little human wanted him to feel better. Even that act alone could make for a blanket over the ice of his emotions. He smiled, entirely honestly, and pulled her in his arms, nuzzling his face against her neck. Her softness felt so very comforting. She was tense, but slouched after a few seconds, not knowing whether she should hug him back. Reluctantly, she did, and buried her face in the scent in his hair when the thick braid was against her nose. When he started disentangling his arms and separating, she felt a desire to pull him back and kiss him and plaster herself against him. It made her exhale a shivering breath.

Instead, he kissed her forehead and turned around, walking away.
Teuta sat back down and downed her mug of ale.

Later on, while he was almost asleep, Loki felt his magic stir in the back of his mind. She was getting stuff out of the pocket universe and putting it back in, he realised. It was going on for some time. She was rearranging it and playing. He turned on his hip and started laughing. It was an honest laugh, because he imagined her expression if he told her that he knew she’d been playing like a little child.
And then he remembered what she’d said to him when they had dinner at the hotel restaurant.
That he seemed to be a kind of person who was so out of touch with the basic understanding of how it feels to enjoy something, honestly enjoy it without pretence, so they have to get elaborately wild.
And he knew that was the truth. He realised he felt better without the pretence. Without the lavishness of his normal life.
Even this simple, stark room, with a cheap bed and furniture that has seen better days, provided more peace for him than the Tehran Interversal. Some comfort, some peace. Not a solution, not a cure for his state, but a kind of tranquillity he didn’t think he would feel again, at least not next to another living being. In fact, he wouldn’t have minded renting a single room, and a single bed. Not for enjoying her body; but for her presence and the sound of her even breath close to his ears. And with that thought, the troubled god fell asleep.

*

In the morning, Teuta was up at dawn. She couldn’t sleep, trying to discern whether the latest turn of Loki’s behaviour was another ruse, or was it truly that very familiar and awful state of mind she would hardly wish upon her worst enemies. Either way, it was a sign of potential trouble: she would be mad or saddened, and they had way too much stuff to do. He still wasn’t up. Huffing, she got out of bed, pulling on clothes, and walking out to knock on his doors. She did so quite loudly, preparing on barging in and waking him up if he wasn’t responding.
“Loki?!”
“Yes?”
“Are you up? Why aren’t you answering your door?”
And then nothing. Huffing again, she opened them quite loudly and walked in. He was completely naked, in the bed, the cover draped lazily over one leg and covering his crotch. His arm was propped up behind his head, and the other one was holding a book. Teuta’s mouth was suddenly dry, her heart pounding violently enough to flush her cheeks entirely.
“Can I help you?”
She gesticulated wildly, in an exasperated fashion.
“You’re reading a book?!”

She suddenly realised she never saw him naked. And, she suddenly realised that image will be seared in her mind for all eternity.

“Yes? Why?”
The innocent annoyance in his voice allowed for a bit of sanity to pierce through the flushing.
“Would you mind terribly, my holiest Majesty, if we were to continue on the mission to save my life, I beg of you?”
She bowed down with a flourish.
“After I finish my chapter. It’s a historically accurate portrayal of the first burning of Mars, quite interesting. You humans are very short tempered.”
Her eye now started twitching uncontrollably. He tapped the bed.
“Come lie with me and I’ll read it to you.”

She inhaled for five seconds, then exhaled for five seconds. And walked to him, perching her lovely bottom on the edge of the bed. He observed her with clear amusement.
“Loki. My… dear fellow traveller. I believed you last night. Is this a bizarre side effect of your latest mental deterioration?”
He grinned.
“No. I’ve… I’ve just wanted a little piece of a quiet morning. There are no inns for a stretch of time and space from where we are. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind. Sorry.”
He looked down, sighed, and closed his book.
She tightened her lips, regretting what she said.
“Shit. Fine. I’m going to go have something for breakfast.”
In a movement quicker that could be seen, he was right in front of her, with his fingers holding her hair and the back of her neck. She gasped, and he kissed her: slowly, with a feathery contact opening her lips and licking her upper one, before taking her breath and licking down the middle of her tongue. Then he separated and looked at her with his hazy green eyes, licking his own lips.
“Thank you, my dear fellow traveller,” he said, his voice as hazy and as inviting. She swallowed a mouthful of saliva and rose from the bed, with bright red cheeks and fully speechless; and exited the room, not looking back. Holding her breath, she descended the stairs to the dining area and sat down, thumping her forehead against the table. The innkeeper approached her.
“Anything,” she said quietly, not lifting her head until he brought her the plate of full breakfast. Then she inhaled, parted her glued lips, licked them, and began eating.

Halfway through her meal, Loki sat down opposite her, grabbing a slice of bread from her plate.
“Done with the chapter?”
“Yes, quite so. Did you know the first settlement on Mars consisted of convicts, societal rejects and people who had nothing left to live for back on Midgard?”
“Earth. I know of it, but not the details.”
“Well, apparently the only ones who really thrived in such a stress-inducing atmosphere were societal rejects, being used to it from back home? Not even conviction serves as a Teflon-coating of one’s character the way being unaccepted does.” He looked away, getting a little potato chip from her plate and nibbling on it. She understood he was redirecting his thoughts into something other than the nagging feelings of desperation. She could sympathise with that.
“So, why did they allow the convicts to burn it?”
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet. Humans do so much in such a short amount of time. The one that they have.”
“Loki, please quit talking about my people like we’re a distant idea. I’m right in front of you.”
He smiled.
“With your surgeries, you’re hardly a short-lived human anymore. Speaking of which, they seem to have improved. Your claws are pure gold. Has that anything to do with that pouch of money you’re packing?”
“I visited a few powerful beings while you were fucking your way through Shangri-La. And I’m still human. Just as I was back home, before I ever knew gods were this reachable.”
“Which beings?”
She just smiled.
“Powerful ones. I’m under heavy protection, so, if you betray me…”
“Full of secrets, my beautiful human.”
“Don’t… ah, well. Yes, I am, my awful god.”
He chuckled.
“I’m not that awful. I saved your life back in Tungsten A.”
She sighed.
“You did. Thank you.” Looking away, she sighed again. “Poor Drachiri.”
“They would’ve gotten to him now, in any case. You couldn’t be responsible for constantly looking after him.”
“I know. Stop eating my food.” She swatted his fingers and a chip fell back down on the plate. She ate it. “We should get going.”
“Of course. I’ve paid the owner for silence. I added a bit of magical persuasion, just in case,”
he said as they were climbing the stairs back to their rooms.

Their things gathered, they exited through the back door of the inn and started their way towards the forest to the West. It was a good, inconspicuous way of travelling, provided that the traveller is capable enough of defending himself against the beasts of the woods: fierce mystery pumas, fiery insects, non-evolved Shi’ar which escaped their home worlds, those weird fucking things that look like the Chitauri but are much faster, and, you know, other criminals hiding there.
The thicket of trees shielded much of the sunlight in places, considering the native plants accepted alien plants which were brought to Andromeda and they entwined and conjoined to form a world familiar to many, but still exotic enough to have one’s awareness raised at a constant level.
Teuta looked around herself as she tried making as little noise as possible, understanding that it would take a day of brisk walking until they reached the village of Edirne. Or, as Loki would aptly put it, that quaint Midgardian settlement where they pretended not to notice their horses had wings.
He thought it foolish; Teuta thought it charming that they held onto their way of life from Earth, perhaps providing a sense of nostalgia and a certain microdose of peace. Provided that you were a well-meaning traveller, and not a murderer. In which case, they would happily resort to their numerous alien weapons to obliterate you.
The Andromedan government turned a blind eye to the crimes in those settlements, forced by an agreement between the races and planetary representatives which all, unanimously, agreed that there would be their brethren who would want to create their own ways of life in exchange for a service needed. The military one.
“In any case, there’s a woman living there, she knows me. She’ll vouch for me,” Teuta said, during a discussion in which Loki wondered why are they going through a heavily armed Edirne.
“What about me?”
“Just keep your mouth shut. You’re chatty today, aren’t you?”
“I thought you wanted me to talk.”
Teuta sighed, ducking under a tree branch. Going through the entangled forest offered Loki quite a view of her legs and ass in those tights. He didn’t mind following.
“You can’t possibly expect a god to keep silent around armed mortals. What if I have to defend myself?”
“You won’t have to. They’re not violent people. They only want to live on their farms in peace.”
“Well, the last time that was promised to me, on Vanaheimr of all places, I was imprisoned for two months.”
“How are the prisons there?”
“Surprisingly cozy, actually. I had a sofa.”
Teuta shook her head, grinning.
“Wait, I’ll climb up, let me see how close we are,” she said and shot up a tree, with such impressive speed Loki had no retort.
“Good, we’re going the right way,” she said, and a flock of birds flew away from the crown of the tree, annoyed by her pulling the branches.
Walking on, they came close to a rowan tree, with its smooth trunk: it was strange, the ground seemed to give way to a clearing – as if even the bush retreated to offer space around the tree. The dirt seemed untouched. Loki caught Teuta’s wrist and held her in place.
“Wait. Something’s wrong.”
He approached it and placed his hand to the bark, closing his eyes. Being one of the magic-bearing trees, rowan had its place amongst the Asgardian family. Rowan was Thor’s saviour, on many occasions. Once, when the fool giant of his brother stomped his way to the Underworld, it bent its branches to save him from being swept away with that foul, eternal river. Once, on Asgard, it reformed its branches to give him protection from being seen while making out with Sif.
And once, when Loki extended his magic to the roots to find out what this protection was, it almost tore a sharp twig through his face.
“I mean no harm,” he whispered, trying to get a reading. And the foliage whispered back, in their ancient herbal language, that protection was offered once again.
“What are you doing?” Teuta asked.
“I am trying to find out what this magical remnant in the air is.”
“There’s a magical remnant in the air?”
“You can’t feel it?”
“Uhh, no.”
Loki sighed, looking the tree up and down.
“Wait, are you talking to that tree?”
“Well, it’s not talking to it, but it has a certain timeless awareness of a presence around-“
“YOU CAN TALK TO TREES?!” Teuta yelled out, her eyes gigantic, before jumping in front of the tree and placing her hand on the bark. Loki was about to pull her back, when a single berry fell down and hit her in the forehead. She rubbed the spot and frowned. Loki smiled at her.
“You are magically entirely incompetent, aren’t you?”
She huffed, stepping away and walking on. He followed her.
“Teuta, haven’t you had magical education?”
She was silent. He grinned behind her.
“My little spy, fully incapable of creating even a tiny flame.”
“Don’t you dare mock me.”
He was silent for a bit, wondering why he wasn’t put off by this. Normally, when encountering clear incompetence, all the charm of someone would wear off. He was too exotic, too hungry, too refined for the likes of those unable to ascend to a higher plane of knowledge. But she still held his interest. Her stomping on the ground and making noises, unable to sneak effectively in her state of embarrassment seemed charming to him.
“So, I take it you failed those classes?”
“I didn’t.”
“But how-“
“I cheated.”

He was loudly laughing now, even more interested.
“How did you cheat?”
“The other students helped me. Some didn’t even know they were helping. I’m resourceful, Loki, and I don’t take kindly to people mocking me for the tiny few things I haven’t managed to learn.”
Ahh, there it is. Loki thought. It’s her wit and potential that I clearly read on her. And mischief. The last thought was accompanied by a clear little twitch of his sex.
“Teuta?”
“What now?”
“I’ll teach you.”
She stopped while holding a protruding side of a bush they were trying to get by, and turned around, looking at him.
“Stop trying to wind me up. I know I can’t. I’ve accepted it.”
He shrugged, but his smile remained.
“Well, my offer stands, in case you change your mind.”
“We don’t have time for this. The sun will set soon.”
“Lead the way,” he said, cocking his head and elegantly swaying his hand in the broad direction. Not saying anything else, Teuta concentrated on choosing the easiest paths onward, through the ever-thickening forest traps. The chirping of a few birds was rarer now that the sun was slowly disappearing. There were even strange chiming noises and a faint sound, like a bell being rung, which certainly meant a creature with a cry higher than what they could hear was nearby.
“These woods are dangerous.” Loki’s beautiful voice edged to Teuta’s ears.
“Yes, they are. It is best if we don’t disturb too many creatures. If I recall correctly, beyond this darker part there will be an opening out. It shouldn’t take more than two hours to reach it.”
“Stop,” Loki said, halting and placing a finger on his lips to shush her. She frowned, looking around herself.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, signalling for her to move on. She shook her head. “I thought I heard a human cry. Well, a humanoid cry.”
“I heard nothing. Are you sure you’re not imagining things? We’d have heard something else as well.”
“I don’t imagine things in forests, Teuta. I’ve been to countless forests. I’ve been in Ashwood on Centauri back when they hadn’t connected the prisons yet. Those are frightening symbiotes; ancient and dark trees, connected at their roots and communicating with sorcery long lost to anything mammalian. Even older than my father. They whisper and murmur about creation of everything to anyone willing to hear it.”
His voice got darker, flowing in a melody of such an olden storyteller, the one who gathers knowledge in silence and reverence. It would’ve been hauntingly beautiful, if Teuta wasn’t still fighting her own attraction to him with a kind of forced but ridiculous anger.
“So you can, in fact, talk to trees?”
He looked at her, as if scolding a child interrupting a life lesson.
“If you’re trying to annoy me, you might just succeed, Teuta.”
“Still, I haven’t heard anything. Let’s pick up the pace.”

Walking on, Teuta thought about it. What if… what if there was a way to learn at least some magic? It would come in very, very, very handy. It could provide assistance where all else fails.
“So, you would be willing to teach me?” she asked, going around a large oak tree and caressing its trunk, observing the magnificence of the tree top.
“I would.”
“And you honestly think I could learn something? Because… I couldn’t do it. Ever.”
Her voice was quieter.
“I presume you were fearful of either the stakes or the consequences.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Lose too much or gain too little. Or destroy something on the way. Seeing how you react to desperation wrought upon other creatures, I think I might be right.”
Teuta was quiet, nibbling on the inside of her lip.
“Here is the thing. In order to reach down inside yourself, you ought to believe you can control it.”
Teuta thought about her mother. And the way she began her journey: slowly descending into the teaching of magic, slowly losing her way.
“What if I reach further and further and further down, Loki, and never get back out? I’ve seen it happen.”
“To whom?”
She stopped, plucking a leaf off a branch and playing with it.
“My mother. She thought she could control it, until she couldn’t, and it ate at her until none of her was left. The… remnants were picked up and rearranged by those around her, turning her into… not my mother anymore.”
“Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter. I think I can’t. I think I don’t want to.”
“Well there you have it. That’s your dampener. The fear.”
They walked on in complete silence for a while, with Loki thinking about her past and what she might have witnessed.
“What were your parents like?” she asked, trying to ascertain his expression when his eyebrows shot up quickly and he inhaled a breath.
“Better than yours, judging from this. But… Not good enough.”
“How is that?”
“Let’s just say there are parts of me that had never been given any attention. The lost and unknowable parts which get stronger as time goes by.”
“Loki. Has that something to do with your… depression?”
“It doesn’t matter, my little hu- What is that?” He suddenly turned around, materialising a dagger in his hand. Teuta heard it as well. A rustling nearby, just behind a few dense bushes. She climbed up a tree and jumped onto another tree top to get closer. Loki followed her movements with his eyes, while trying to reach the strands of his magic. There was a quiet gasp and tiny movements of something small running away from them.

Chapter Text

A susurrus of snapping branches increased as Teuta swayed from the tree to the ground and began running, cutting through the thicker shrubs as she went. Finally, with a loud increase of breath, she jumped forth and knocked the running creature down just as Loki appeared on her right side. She turned it around on the ground as it shouted.
“It’s a child!” she yelled, breathing quickly.
It was a small boy, dirty, with muddy face and torn clothes. He kept yelling while trying to free himself from her grasp.
“Wait, wait, calm down!”
“Are you sure it’s a child?” Loki asked, his face now in front of the boy, who started crying while squirming.
“Calm down. Shh. It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.” Teuta tried calming her voice as she made him sit up. Loki squinted, sniffing his skin.
“He stinks.”
“He was probably hiding. Hey, little one, were you hiding? Are you lost? Do you understand me?”
The kid stared at her, sniffing now, fear apparent in its wide grey eyes. He nodded.
“Can you speak, humanoid?” Loki asked. Teuta looked at him with disbelief.
“Ignore him, little one. Are you lost? Look, I’m human.”
The child observed her, before opening his dry, cracked lips:
“Yes, I’m lost.”
Teuta caressed his face.
“Are you hungry?” she said, pulling her backpack from her back and getting the water bottle out, along with an apple she’d brought from the inn. The boy started eating, shoving the fruit in his mouth, making Teuta smile. She pulled out a piece of cloth, wetting it with water and cleaning his face gently.
“He’s not over six,” she said to Loki, pulling another apple out. Loki nodded.
“Are you from the village?”
He mumbled, wiping his mouth, extending his hand in a plea for more fruit.
“We will take you home, alright?”
“We will?” Loki asked. “Are you entirely sure that is a human child? It stinks.”
“Have you ever been around children?”
“Well, Asgardian chi-“
“Are around five hundred the second they’re born, and they’re eating starlight and shitting stardust and they don’t scream and cry, they sing songs of their suffering and holler out complaints, yes, yes. Now help me, carry my backpack.”
Loki frowned, wanting to voice his disapproval of her simplifications and insults, but she shoved the backpack into him and hoisted the boy up, carrying him on her hip.
“Ooh, you’re heavy like a mountain!” she overreacted, making the child grin. “Did you wander off into the woods? What happened? Where are your parents?”
“I ran from it.”
“From what?”
“The monster…” The boy’s voice faltered as he shivered and hid against her neck. She looked at Loki.
“Can you tell me what the monster looked like? Did it have a big head?”
The boy nodded.
“Was it very big?”
The boy shook his head.
“If you help me and describe it, we can protect you. I am very strong and this man here is a wizard.”
The boy leaned around her head to look at Loki with his large eyes.
“Is he scary?” she asked.
The boy nodded, making her laugh. Loki rolled his eyes, sticking his tongue out at the boy behind her back. The child now smiled lightly.
“He is a powerful wizard, and we will get you to your parents safely, alright? What is your name?”
“Lyv.”
“That’s a very pretty name, Lyv. I am Teuta, and this scary wizard is Loki. Now, did the monster have wings? No? Alright, take it easy. Was it fat? Mhm, okay then.” She looked at Loki, and he nodded.
“Did it walk on four legs, like a cow?”
“Yes! Like a pig!” the boy exclaimed, tightening his hands against her wool cape.
“A monk pig,” Loki added. “Why would it attack? It must’ve been enchanted.”
“Pig had bones, horns here.” The boy placed his fists on his head and chest. Teuta frowned. She knew of the experiments run by Orgoscope and their connection to Thanos. Orgoscope produced most of the implants bought by organizations throughout this quadrant of the universe. They also dealt with a higher scope of operations, always experimenting with creating new creatures, new pathways of consciousness sewn into whatever could contain it. She knew they traded with Thanos’ fanatics, including Ebony Maw and her mother.
However, she rarely heard of the results of those experiments running free. If she had never met Rocket, she would not have made this connection. Giving another apple to the child, she tried to speak more quietly with Loki, telling him of her thoughts, while leaving the details of her mother out of it. She reasoned it would be wiser not to let him know of a thing which he could use to betray her. Possibly. 
“But how would such a creature escape?”
“I don’t know. Rocket did, though. He never told me everything, but… Those were his dark, dark days.”
“I have seen the scars on his chest.”
“Yes. He doesn’t hide it. Not a fan of talking about it, but if you get close to him, he eventually tells the whole tale.”
“He’s your friend.”
“My best friend. My… only real friend. I am sure he had his reasons for leaving. We’ll meet each other eventually. It’s probably for the best that he is away from me. It’s safer.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t tell you.”
“Teuta, you can trust me.”
She stopped walking, but still caressed the back of the boy soothingly while he laid his head on her shoulder, exhausted.
“I really wish I could,” she spoke, sighing. Loki was taken aback by the sadness he saw in her eyes. He wanted to caress her face.
“You’ll understand very soon that you can, and you will.”
“Loki… You don’t have to do this. We can just get on with this task.”
“Very well. Go on then.”

Continuing their walking, they were soon out of the forest, where they could see the sky. The clearing was already larger, and up ahead of them laid a kind of hamlet with wooden houses. The deceptively quaint sight now made Teuta gasp, for it looked quite different from when she last saw it: some of the cottages were razed to the ground, charred grass and smoke billowing around them. There were people crying, some of the residents didn’t even notice the three of them. The other houses were intact, but the entire scene appeared as if a tornado had passed through it.
They got nearer, and Teuta tapped the back of the sleeping child.
“Lyv? Sweetie, we’re here. We’re home,” she said quietly. He opened his sleepy eyes and turned his head around, holding a breath. Scrambling down off of her, he began running. Teuta and Loki followed him. He ran between several houses, to reach his own. There was a scream from his mother when she saw him, and she dropped the cloths she’d been holding to run and pick the child up in her arms, starting to cry and kiss his entire head.
His father, sister and brother ran out, all pulling at him and hugging him. Teuta didn’t speak, she didn’t want to interrupt the reunion, but his mother lifted her swollen eyes and looked at the strangers.
“Who are you?”
“They brought me back. That’s the flying lady and a wizard.”
Teuta took a step closer, caressing the head of the boy.
“He was lost in the forest. We were passing through.”
The mother wrapped her arms around Teuta and tightened them, cutting off her breath, and thanking her profusely. The father took her hand and shook it hard with both of his, choking back tears.
“Can we offer you anything? Are you hungry?”
“What happened here?” Teuta asked. “Was there a fire?”
“There was. People got angry. The Centauri came, they came for some of us. Somehow, they knew we had fugitives. But… they were good people, those were not great crimes, and the others… They were wrongly imprisoned, wrongly sentenced. We… we were just trying to live… And…”
“They took them?”
“Yes, because we couldn’t pay. And then the beasts came, later that night.”
“Beasts?”
“They’re… I’ve never seen them. They weren’t any of the animals from our forests. These are new.”
“Monk pigs?”
The woman’s husband joined in.
“Yes, monk pigs, but they were enhanced by that scum from Orgoscope.”
Teuta looked at him.
“Yes, I know all about it, Unseen. I know how you get your implants. I worked for the military. I have seen the monsters and the pain. I thought we’d be safe here, but the Andromedan filthy cowards just offered us to those fucking tyrants from the Alpha Centauri!” He spat on the ground. His wife put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him down.
“I am sorry.” Teuta looked down at the ground. Loki had his arms across his chest, silent, listening to everything.
“Do you… do you know Ura? She’s… a friend,” Teuta asked, afraid.
“Yes, she’s alive, at home probably.”
Teuta nodded. “I am sorry for everything that happened. Lyv, sweetie, don’t wander off again, alright?” She crouched and caressed the boy’s cheek. He held onto his father’s leg the whole time, hiding his face. He smiled at her and hugged her when she opened her arms.
The family thanked her and Loki, and Teuta started walking between the houses, reaching the one slightly farther away.
“Who’s Ura?”
“She’s a doctor. She helped me once, and I returned the favour.”
“Was she supposed to vouch for you? The Centauri are here. Will she betray us?”
“She would never. I have to see if she’s alright.”

When the house was in sight, they saw a Xandarian woman opening the doors and hurrying out towards Teuta, who ran and hugged her tightly.
“Ura! Are you alright? Are the kids alright?”
“I… I am, we are, we are fine.”
“I heard what happened. How many of those beasts were there?”
“Some… I don’t know, ten, fifteen? I didn’t count. They took their weapons, all of them, and tried fighting… We lost some.” She shook her head, clearly still in shock. “Come, let’s go inside, please.”
She pulled on Teuta’s hand and they all walked in, before sitting down.
“Do you want tea?”
“Ura, please, you don’t have to-“
“No, no, I need something to keep busy.” She turned around, starting to boil the water. Teuta could hear her three children from the other room.
“Orgoscope,” she spoke, and Ura nodded. “But they were not released.”
“No, someone definitely did it on purpose. Most likely bought them then set them loose.” She placed her hands on the counter behind her and looked at Teuta. “Someone with the intention to see the damage they could do. I think we both know who it is.”
Teuta nodded, biting her lip and looking away. Ura walked to Loki and extended her hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m Ura. I’m impolite, but forgive me, things have been…”
“Loki. It is alright. Accept my gratefulness for allowing me into your home.” He bowed his head in the slightest. Ura smiled lightly and looked at Teuta, who was busy tracing patterns on the tablecloth with her claw, not listening to them.
“So, did you kill them all?” she suddenly asked.
“I’m afraid not. There are four or five left, from what I’ve gathered. At least that’s how it was explained by the woman who was the guard last night. Teuta,” Ura continued, before turning around to pour them the tea and placing the cups on the table, “are you alright? Why are you here?”
Teuta sighed.
“It’s a long story. Well, not that long. We escaped Tungsten A. Rocket is… somewhere, I don’t know. But I have an actual chance of getting the units, because I have… help.” She looked at Loki. “We’re indebted to each other, and he is-“
“The Norse god of mischief,” Ura finished for her, looking at him with a smile. “Why were you in that prison?”
“I needed to hide. I was captured, almost, by the…” She darted a look at Loki, wondering whether she can say this out loud. “By Maw. I had no choice.”
Ura gasped, and Loki’s mouth opened slightly, before he asked “Ebony Maw? Thanos’ Ebony Maw?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he after you?”
“He doesn’t know?” Ura asked. Teuta shook her head. “Teuta, if you’re working with him, he needs to know. He might be in danger.”
“What danger? I can take care of myself.”
“See? He’s fine,” Teuta added.
“Teuta!” Ura raised her voice. “Loki, she is Alder Craw’s only daughter.”

Loki stood up fast, the chair dragging on the floor behind him as he stepped away and looked at Teuta. She closed her eyes and frowned, having felt the pain upon hearing that name. Loki shook his head, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t even know she had… children.”
“She did. One. Me. But not anymore.” She opened her eyes, expecting to see the vile look of disgust and fear every time anybody learned of this fact. But it wasn’t there. There was only wide-eyed shock and worry in his contorted eyebrows. He sat back down and took both of her hands in his.
“Teuta… I… don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to be said, my god. This girl has been trying to escape her whole life,” Ura added, and Loki tightened his grip on her hands. Teuta pulled them out.
“He’s not your god. Enough, I can’t talk about this. Even if this was Thanos’ work, that doesn’t change the fact I need to get rid of the Centauri. I need this money.”

The loud dragging of the chairs had alerted the children in the next room there was somebody in the kitchen, and there were now three little heads peering inside. Teuta noticed them and grinned.
“Who are you? Ura, there are tiny ghosts in your house! I’ll hunt them down!” She got up and started towards them. The oldest boy ran in.
“Teuta! It is us, Teuta! It is us, we are not ghosts!” He ran right into her arms. She laughed loudly and hugged him, while the other two hugged her back.
“Oh my god, oh my god, look at you all, you are gigantic! What are you feeding them?” She kept chuckling and hugging the children. They knew who she was. The smallest girl, who was not over six, walked over to Loki and looked up at him. He frowned at her.
“Who are you?”
“I am a god, little girl.”
She blinked at him, not understanding anything, before going to sit on her mother’s lap.
“Honey, would you please wait in the other room? Mommy has something to discuss with Teuta and Loki.”
“I know everything, I saw the beast, I can listen to it,” the middle girl said, nodding her head.
“I know you did, but still-“
“Will Teuta kill them? Will you protect us?” the boy asked, pulling on Teuta’s arm. She inhaled a loud breath and held his face.
“Yes. I will find them all.”
Loki looked at her.
“Teuta, there are multiple women and men tracking the remaining ones, and we’ve called on the Andromedan force, they should be here tomorrow at the latest-“
“Don’t worry. I’m faster.” Teuta rose, putting her backpack on her chair and pulling her blades from the pocket universe.
“What, are we going to go hunt for them?” Loki asked warily.
“No, I am. You will stay here.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t work well with others. I’ve hunted beasts before. I’ll be back soon. You… you take care of Ura and the children.”
“I beg your pardon?” He yelled, opening his palms. “What am I, your pet guardian dog?!”
“Is that magic?!” the little girl interrupted, seeing Loki’s seidr glistening.
“Yes, my sweet princess, my friend is a magician. He can show you beautiful tricks while I am away.”
“What the fuck-“
“Loki! Language!” Ura yelled at him.
“Forgive me, mistress Ura, but I am a god, you cannot expect me to-“
“Loki, I am going alone, and there is nothing you can do about it. Loki, please. I need to do this alone. It's just a few beasts.”
She held both of his shoulders with her hands. As usual, Loki found his resolve softening when she looked up at him with her radiant eyes. It was becoming very annoying; this gentle but coercing force she seemed to have over him. He knew that, if he was to follow her, they would get in a very, very serious fight. And he was still deeply shocked by what he found out about her. He slouched slightly, and sighed. His thin pink lips unglued, and he licked them, shaking his head.
“You… I am responsible for your life. Please, don’t endanger it.” He caressed her face with just the tips of his fingers. Her expression softened. That green, green which stared down at her was so inviting, like a warmed bath that would ease the ache out of her every tired muscle. She wanted to lean her face into his large palm, have him cup her cheek and stroke it, but she had to stay strong. The few silent moments of so many things kept quiet between them were interrupted by the girl who was sitting on Ura’s lap, who wanted to whisper, but failed at it miserably, because she spoke into Ura’s ear quite loudly.

“Is that Teuta’s boyfriend?”
Ura chuckled and kissed the girl’s cheek. Teuta separated from him and took the girl in her arms, pinching the same plump cheek.
“No, that is not my boyfriend, he is a man I’m working-“
“A god,” he interrupted.
“…a god I’m working with. A magician!”
She said, tickling the child and making her laugh, before placing her down on the ground. Loki observed her silently, the way she displayed gentleness and touches, somehow wanting to be the object of it. This morning at the inn, when she entered the room, he wished again to be kissed, just like at Gullveig’s. He wanted her to sit on the bed and give him a soft, lush kiss. So he took it. And now he wanted her to do to it again, along with her hands roaming his skin.
Was he seriously jealous of a child?
She hugged Ura again, before tightening her hair and getting rid of her wool cape. They walked outside and Loki followed them. She secured her blades, and, not wanting to make the scene into a farewell, just said she’d be back soon, and ran on.

“Are you coming?” Ura asked, holding the doors open. Loki nodded and sighed, turning around and walking back in.
“Give me your hands,” she said, and he complied. She took off the bandages still covering the almost entirely healed wounds, inspecting them. “What happened here? Were you hanged by your wrists?”
He looked at the children staring out the window, who were trying to see where Teuta had gone. He spoke more quietly.
“She hanged me, so to speak of. By accident, anyway.”
Ura winced. “How did that happen?”
“Ah. I did wrong by her, and she tracked me down and got her revenge. In a manner. I am sure she’ll tell you all about it.”
“Most likely not. I usually need pliers to open her mouth,” she said, and Loki smiled. She placed her hands in her lap.
“She will be alright, Loki. I can tell you’re worried.”
“I am not. I know that I have a working partner who is entirely capable of applying her Unseen training to hunt down a minor beast.”
“So you’re not…”
“No.”
Ura tightened her lips and nodded, with a shadow of disbelief crossing over her eyes.
“I want to keep myself busy. I will go prepare an ointment for your wounds; it’s not very likely you’ll come across these plants further on your journey. It will speed up the healing. Would you mind looking after them for me? I won’t take long.”
Loki leant forward, closer to her.
“Can’t… Can’t they accompany you? I am afraid I am entirely unequipped to deal with human offspring.”
Ura laughed loudly.
“They don’t bite. Well, not often. Just play with them.”
“Play? With them?”
He contorted his face, almost as if he didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“You were a child once. Think of something. You three, come here! Listen to me, Loki will look after you while mommy goes and makes a balm for his hands, alright? Behave! I will be very angry if you don’t behave. Got it?”
There were several reluctant head nods while she kissed their cheeks, and just like that, she was gone.
Loki got up. They were tiny in comparison to him, and had to bend their necks all the way to the back to see his face. He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. By the Nine, this is unbelievable.

Teuta talked to the woman in charge and her right hand. They explained the situation, and, while they did offer to accompany her, she declined, running back into the darkening forest just as dusk slowly disappeared from around them.
Climbing on top of a young oak tree, Teuta was still, expanding her lenses to their full size and activating the zooming in feature. Her eyes looked as if they were entirely covered by a silver plate, almost glowing in the dark while she scanned everything.
Determining the possible movements by following the dried blood trails spilt the previous day, she silently hopped from branch to branch of trees very close by, and sneaked crouching by the bushier low ground.
There were some quieter, typical forest animals around her, all evading her, and she could hear the tiny buzzing of the very many insects. Now, in the pure darkness, where the colours were mutated by her lenses to paler ones, with more contrast, it appeared as if she had found herself in a pale green dream; be it pleasant or a nightmare.
She scoured as much ground as she could, following the instructions given to her by more experienced native trackers, and after a while, she saw it in the distance, chewing on a bloodied small animal laying in front of it. The victim had been one of the Chitauri look-alikes. Teuta slid slowly across a heavy branch above it, getting closer and closer very, very slowly, wanting to plunge down with a dagger into its neck. It truly had been a monk pig, slightly larger and of brownish complexion, but with large claws and distorted hoofs. The muscles edging its back were prominent like on a large cat, implying its strength. And the head - the head was the most horrifying of all: bony antlers with hooked horn-endings, curving forward to allow impaling of anything in front of it. Teuta licked her dry lips and got into a crouching position, spinning the hilt of her dagger in her hand and holding on to the branch with the other one, tightening her muscles to prepare for the jump down.
The beast stopped chewing and turned its head around, fully around, looking straight up into Teuta’s face, its eyes a gleaming white, amplified with Teuta’s vision. She flinched with pure horror, before jumping down. The beast stepped away and turned around, going for her and almost knocking her down. She ran to the tree and jumped up just in time to avoid a swipe of those sharp antlers, gasping loudly and hoisting herself up. The beast rammed into the tree, making it tremble, and made awful screeching noises, starting to open the bark with its clawed hoofs. Teuta breathed heavily, going farther up and away, onto another tree branch, moving into the darker foliage to hide herself.

The beast circled the few trees, trying to determine where its next prey had gone; Teuta put her dagger between her teeth, pulled out her vibranium knives quietly, and sent them flying into the beast’s back. The howl that came out of it was almost deafening, before it turned around and started clawing at the tree Teuta was on. She jumped down behind it and tried grabbing its antlers, but the greasy, probably fat covered back of it made her slip, and the beast turned again, trying to stomp her. Teuta lurched, trying to scurry away using her feet before jumping up. One of the antlers grazed the back of her thigh, making her scream and hurry her running.
Extending her claws, she jumped sideways, making the beast run past her, and then dug them deep into the buttery flesh of its back, making it howl again and try to throw her off: one of her hands slipped off and she yelled out, grabbing an antler and reaching to the front, sinking the claws of her other hand into its eye. It still thrashed about, managing to get a few good kicks at Teuta’s breastplate. Teuta straddled the slippery back, and started plunging her claws in erratically, with the blood spurting everywhere, finally managing to bring the creature closer to its finishing twitches of life.

Morning seemed to be late, as Loki sat on the porch of the horribly dainty wooden cottage, trying his best not to make any movements that would wake the awfully energetic little human demon who could apparently stay up longer than even Frigga, trying to get one more story out of him; the little girl curled on the bench next to him, her mouth open while she drooled on his arm. He huffed and laid his head on the benchrest behind him, sighing. This could’ve very well been one of the worst nights he had to endure in his six hundred years of existence. The children had demanded magical fireworks, sixteen times in a row, while squeaking with glee and jumping to catch the non-existent lights.
Then they said they were hungry, and he was forced to try to find Ura, who had apparently disappeared from the face of the planet. So he got them something from the fridge and slices of bread. After they ate, they wanted to know everything about him; that was the only part he enjoyed, talking about himself. He explained the schools of his childhood, and the magical learning. He started embellishing stories about some of the beasts and horrors he encountered. In retrospect, the one about Surtur and the way his flames peeled the skin from the toughest Einherjar, with details of the flesh opening and the screams might have been a touch too rough for the middle girl, because she started crying. The older brother covered her mouth with his hand to make her silent, wanting to hear more. Loki shrugged and continued. Then he tried easing it up and told them, with magical lights twirling around them, of the nights on the very North back on their homeland, Xandar. The smallest girl was entranced, even in the most gruesome details, and kept asking questions. After a while, even the boy, who wanted to know as much as possible about the bodies of the female demons, making Loki grin and whisper extra details in his ear; yawned and pulled his already sleeping middle sister to their room.
He said his mother would be back by morning, considering her work needed a lot of time.
When Loki turned back around, the smallest girl had her eyes opened widely, showing she wasn’t sleepy at all. When they were gone (and she slapped her bare tiny feet all the way to the doors to make sure), she ran to Loki and whispered she was magical as well, displaying a miniature blue flame on the very tip of her finger. He smiled widely, and caressed her hair, now taking extra time to explain to her how to control it and twist it into shapes.
After a while, she was tired, but said she didn’t want to sleep. She dragged him outside and made him tell her of the creation of the Nine Realms, pretending she understood every complicated word. Loki drifted off, finding himself fully lost in the tale; reminding himself of the entrancing yearning he felt for knowledge when he was a child. He smiled, looking at the floor, before he felt a tiny little press against his shoulder. The girl curled up against him, firmly asleep. He sighed with gratefulness and leant his head on the benchrest, thinking about Teuta. Feeling the breeze flutter against his face, he thought the girl must be cold, and he pulled out a blanket from his pocket universe and threw it over her.

Ura had gathered the herbs at the exact chime of the hour under the moonlight and mixed them together. With incantations and the help of her nanotechnology, she made the standard potions for Teuta, and ointment for Loki’s wounds. It took hours, but she knew her children were safe with the god. She felt it.
When the first light of dawn coloured the sky, nobody had slept much: not the three of them, not anyone from the village, still fearing for their neighbours’ lives, still awaiting the bravest ones’ return.

Teuta dragged the beast by its antlers, limping to the edge of the forest, before looking up at the lightening skies and turning off her lenses. Her eyes were blue again, but red-rimmed with the pain and the sleeplessness. She limped on, dragging the dead body to the group of guards. Reporting of everything she’d seen, she shook their hands and said she was going to go see Ura. They thanked her and asked that she tell Ura they’ll need more doctors until the Andromedans arrive.
She found her friend with her bags clinking with the glasses and vials inside, hugging her tightly. Retelling the tale of how she slayed the beast, they walked back to the cottage. Teuta stopped in her tracks: Loki was sitting outside, sprawled wide legged on the bench, with his hair hanging backwards from his position, and the little girl tucked in a blanket against his right side. She found herself smiling at the unusually gentle image. When he heard her steps, he flinched and got up, lowering the girl’s head to the bench and meeting the two women approaching him.

“What happened? Are you alright?” He eyed her clothes, covered in blood, and the way she walked, clearly with a wound in her leg. He frowned.
“It got me in the thigh, but I managed. Huge goddamn thing, fucking heavy, too; I was more annoyed with dragging it back than anything else. We were right, experimental monk pigs.”
He nodded, putting an arm around her waist to help her walk, but she swatted him away very harshly.
“I’m fine, Loki.”
Ura picked her daughter from the bench, kissing her and taking her to her bed.
“You’re not fine, Teuta, you could have died! I knew I needed to go with you!”
“It’s just a scratch, calm down, why do you even care?”
She frowned at his worried expression, not understanding it. He ran his hand through his loose, lustrous hair and puckered his lips, before sighing.
“Fine. Act tough. Whatever.”
He walked back inside, wanting to make himself some tea. Teuta, still confused, followed him inside, where she stared at his back until Ura walked in.
“Come on back, I cleared the bed.”
Teuta followed her to her practice room, where she began stripping out of her clothes and laid on her stomach. Ura took to cleaning the wound, exclaiming that it wasn’t deep, and began dousing it with her ointments, making a few stitches where necessary.
“You need to sleep, my friend,” she said, applying a specially made bandage to her leg; the fibres were made from the exact fabric as her sturdy clothing, made to endure superficial cuts.
Teuta agreed, taking the warm tunic handed to her and curling up on the bed, covering herself with a blanket.

Loki exclaimed that he needed to go talk to grown up creatures and stormed out. He was disturbed by the disdain she showed when he displayed his concern for her. How could she not see that he was being honest? Was that her way, the constant drawing back into herself? It was hard for him to admit feeling hurt by her swatting his arm away, with the underlying rejection.

He reached the group of soldiers and told them he was the companion of the Unseen, asking for the details. Apparently, they’d managed to put down thirteen of the beasts, and there were around four more roaming the forest. The Andromedan back up was on the way, taking their time with the paperwork needed for interfering with the Edirne’s normally autonomic rule; they should be here by the end of the day. And, if there hadn’t been tremendous help by both the Unseen fighter and another powerful being, who knows how many casualties there would have been?
“What powerful being?” Loki asked.
“He didn’t say his name, but he was enormous, claiming he was a visitor from another land. He showed concern over what had happened and stormed off when he heard of the implications of the dangers. Literally stormed off – I have never seen it before, he summoned lightning and the belt around his stomach lit up like a firecracker, and his eyes… his eyes were burning! I… don’t know who he was, but he single-handedly slayed seven of them, before being summoned away. I mean, that’s at least what he said, that he was needed elsewhere.”
“Megingjord,” Loki whispered, thinking about Thor’s belt of strength. “Thank you. I am sure the Andromedan force would be better off thinking you people did this yourselves. Think about it: if they don’t, it might give them cause for the annex.”
The man frowned, understanding.
“It… we don’t want that.”
“I know. Be careful,” Loki said, patting the man on the back with a tiny flash of seidr to make sure he remained silent, before turning around, and with a twitch of his upper lip and a grit of his jaw, he firmly strode off into the woods. There’s no beast I can’t slay that my brother can. And with that thought, competitive jealousy, he would return to the guards with the remaining corpses, bolstered by his anger that he allowed Teuta to go alone, while he idled away telling stories to the children.

Teuta was up, showered and dressed in her friend’s comfortable tunic, waiting for the meal which smelled delicious, cooking away slowly.
“And he said that the lights are green and blue and yellow, and that ladies dance under them, naked,” the boy said quietly to Teuta, so that his mother didn’t hear him. Teuta nodded with a smile.
“Did he? And what else did he say?”
“He told us the story of Surtur, and how he burns people alive, WITH FIRE, and he will end the world, and he said that Asgard was made of gold, and how he had fought all the demons in the Underworld!” the middle girl added. “And he made us sandwiches.”
Teuta smiled, caressing the child’s hair.
“She cried,” the boy said, pointing to his sister.
“I did not!”
“You did too! You’re a coward!”
“I am not a coward! Loki said I wasn’t a coward, he gave me this gem and said it will protect me!” She pulled out a tiny ruby.
“He is right. That will surely protect you. And you have to protect your siblings, young girl.”
“I will. I will be as strong as you are, Teuta, I will be an Unseen!”
Teuta sighed.
“There are other ways of protecting your family, you know?”
“Fuck that,” the smallest girl said. Ura gasped and pointed her spatula at the girl. Teuta covered her mouth to stop a snorting laugh from coming out, while Ura reprimanded her youngest, who defiantly had her chin up.
“Loki said fuck that,” the girl reasoned, and Teuta scrunched her eyes closed and laughed behind her palm. Ura snorted a little but kept a straight face. The girl continued.
“He said I can go to Shangri-La and find a teacher who will teach me magic.”
“What magic, you fool?!” her brother yelled, and the girl pushed him away. They began fighting, and Teuta separated them, making them sit still, while the girl blew a raspberry at him.
“You are lying. You can’t do magic.”

The little girl displayed a fully grown up, egotistical smirk, and opened her palm, making an illusion of a bright blue flame shoot up to the ceiling. The children jumped away, and Teuta’s eyebrows lifted. Ura’s jaw dropped down.

“You learn fast, little one.”
Loki was standing in the doorway, his hair dishevelled, a streak of splattered blood on his tunic, his hands muddy. He got nearer to the girl and leant down, putting his hands on his knees.
“Control the surge, control it with everything you’ve got. You might make a fine witch one day.”
Ura turned the fire off and placed the pans on the middle of the table, before dragging her child a bit farther away to talk to her. Teuta ladled a lot of the food to her plate and began eating, all the while staring at Loki who washed his hands thoroughly, rolling the sleeves of his shirt all the way up, before sitting down at the table to eat, staring directly at Teuta.
There was something about this dishevelled look. He seemed to have been in a fight of some sort. The strong forearms were streaked with prominent veins on his milky white skin, his long fingers tightening around the bread slice to tear off a bit and put it in his mouth. Teuta traced the movement with her eyes, watching his lips leave wet traces on the meaty tips of his fingers.
His face was slightly dirty, and the jaw grits while he chewed made her feel… like she wouldn’t mind being his meal. Teuta swallowed her food, taking a sip of water and clearing her throat.
“Care to tell me what happened?”
“When?” he asked, looking disinterested. She sighed. He was still mad at her for some reason.
“Loki. Why are you filthy?”
“Oh, I killed the remaining beasts.”
She put her spoon down.
“You’ve what?”
“There were some more left, so I went and did it. Needed a bit of… how do you people say it? Me-time.” He tapped his chest. She frowned.

“You had to out-do me? Of course.” She rolled her eyes, before taking the spoon back up and continuing to eat. Now he frowned. Ura joined them at the table.
“What are you on about? This had nothing to do with you.”
“Right. You were mad because you had to babysit, and you had to show you were better. Congratulations, you managed to get better in the five hundred extra years you have on me. Well done. You want a medal now?”
“I am not a nursery maid! I am a god! And this had nothing to do with you, Teuta! If anything, I helped these people, they were in danger.”
“Oh, forgive me, my liege, we are most welcome for your indubitable assistance.” She bowed, before getting up and walking to the sink to pour herself more water.
“I helped!” Loki said to Ura.
“You did. We are very grateful.”
“Loki!” The smallest girl ran to him and hugged him. “You are as strong as Teuta!”
“Oh I am, my little witch.” He patted her back. Teuta’s eye twitched, she leant against the sink, angry that he would be so self-servient about the situation, but strangely endeared with the affection he was showing the child. She stomped back to the table.
“Whatever. Let’s just eat.”
“I didn’t do it to spite you.”
There was no reply; Teuta kept ripping off pieces of bread and dunking them in the sauce angrily.
“Teuta, it’s not a competition,” Ura said, placing her daughter on her knee and making her eat tiny pieces of meat. “We’ve lost too many to this horrid incident. Any help is greatly appreciated. You know how I always valued all you’ve done for me. This doesn’t change it.”
“I know. I am sorry, I’m just… Wondering why he is pretending to be something he isn’t.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I told you, Loki, I know of your ilk. I know of your ways and of your deceptions. I just don’t understand why you want to seem like you… care.”

He inhaled, tightening his fists. He was deeply, deeply offended now. He looked down, licking his lips.
“Thank you for the meal, Ura. I have to go get washed and ready.” He said, before winking at the little girl who didn’t understand a word of what was going on, and got up, walking out of the room.

Ura shook her head at Teuta.

“That is a god of Mischief. You know I know them. You know what happened to me. Do not judge me, Ura, I am being wary for all of us.”
“Teuta, he has given me no reason to doubt his intentions. He took care of my children.”
The little boy listened attentively, and now turned to Teuta, saying how he put them to bed. Teuta shook her head, sighing. Was this guilt she was feeling?
“He betrayed me and took my magic,” she said quietly, to Ura. “He left me alone on a mining station. They’re all the same, I don’t need to take years getting to know him only to come to this conclusion.”
“And you have tortured him. We’ve been over this, are the humans all the same? Are we Xandarians? Aren’t my pink children all different from one another even now? Don’t we have different virtues and flaws? Why should the gods all be alike?” Ura replied, covering the little girl’s ears. Teuta gritted her teeth, getting up.
“Are you saying I have to go apologise?”
“Go, go already,” Ura said, waving her hand in the air to make Teuta go faster, as she straightened her tunic and walked out.

“Why are they fighting like this?” The little boy asked.
“Because they’re in love, my son. They just don’t realise it yet.” She caressed his cheek over the table.
“Like you and mommy were in love?” The middle girl asked. Ura gulped a tear back, and replied: “Nobody will ever love anyone the way your mommy loved me. She gave me the three of you, and we all have the greatest love she gave us, each other. And we will all meet again one day after this life, my little dove.” Leaning over, she pressed her lips against the child’s cheek, closing her eyelids tightly to try to keep the tears inside her eye sockets.

Chapter Text

Teuta walked to the bathroom and knocked.
“What?” he asked from behind the closed doors.
“Can we talk?”
“I am showering.”
“I’ll wait.”

Teuta leant against the wall in the hallway, tapping her foot on the floor. The little sunlight coming from the farther window slanted against the walls and she started tracing it with her bare toes, going down the floor and then back up against the white plaster. The hallway was long and narrow, with doors leading to respective rooms of Ura’s home.
Loki opened the doors with only a towel wrapped around his slim hips. Teuta gulped and forced her eyes to remain on his face. He looked at her naked knee before she lowered her foot back down. When he exited, they were a foot apart from each other.
She could smell the herbal shampoo wafting off his damp hair. Thyme.
She wrung her fingers together and looked at the floor for a second. The edge of his towel and his long feet were in her eyeline now. Why are his feet attractive? Jesus Christ.

“Loki.”
“Yes?” He crossed his arms over his chest, a hurt expression on his face. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
“Loki… I was hurt by the fact you did better than me, so I lashed out. I’m sorry.”
“Alright. Is that all?”
She nodded reluctantly, biting her tongue. He looked to the wall above her.
“Very well. That apology is accepted. Can I go get dressed now?”
He turned to walk away, but she slapped her palm against the front of his wet shoulder and tried turning him back towards her, but the narrow hallway was, well, narrow, and she ended up pushing him against the wall. His eyebrow twitched.

“I am sorry.”
She still had her hand on his shoulder, and now slid it down his arm, gathering water droplets on the way. Wet.
“For what, Teuta?” His lowered voice vibrated in her ears. Teuta loved the way he said her name, she adored it. She looked away for a moment, licking her lips.
“I am sorry for treating you as if you were… any of… my, umm, my ex-gods of mischief,” she said carefully. He squinted at her.
“You had sex with them?” he asked, equally carefully. She removed her hand from him.
“It wasn’t just sex.” She felt her heart beat increasing after that word poured out of the mouth she refused to look at. Staring at the ray of sunshine slanting against the wall farther away, she spoke. “It was more than that. Until it wasn’t. But that is my personal problem, and that is my personal cosmic irony.” She smiled at herself, biting her lip. “I promise to treat your betrayals, treacheries and deceit as solely your own, Loki.” She looked back at him with a smirk on her face. He stared at her face, at the smart expression, at the way she tried to hold back, to restrain herself; and thought about how spiteful she was, how wonderfully feisty, and how incredibly passionate. He had to pace the deafening desire to grab her by the waist and smother his face against her full breasts that were peeking wonderfully bare underneath her tunic.
 
“Oh Teuta, Teuta. What am I going to do with you?” he purred, slouching back against the wall. Her eyebrow twitched for a second, as the colour of that voice sped the tickling path of her wetness gliding out of her. Her cunt prickled and she tried tightening that muscle for a second. She felt the air getting hotter as the turn for the playfulness edged its way in the small space between them.
“Nothing, my god. Be a good boy, and I might not yell at you so much.” She smiled again, staring directly into that terrifyingly seducing forest green of his irises.
“What a threat, phew!” He widened his eyes for a second. She lifted her hand and extended her claws slowly in front of his eyes, getting closer to him, not losing her smirk or the spark in her eye.
“You have to fall asleep eventually. Don’t provoke me.”
Loki moved his head slightly forward, before darting his tongue out and licking the back of the claw of her middle finger.
Teuta felt her insides tightening into a cramp, even more of her arousal seeping out. Her breath increased. She gulped, wanting to slice through that towel of his to see what was underneath. He licked his lips and leant his head back again, smiling lightly.
She closed her eyes for a moment, before smothering her face against the top of his chest, inhaling the scent of his skin. It was slippery wet, and he tasted so good when she licked him, and continued licking up his throat to his lips. He opened his mouth to kiss her, but she retreated and placed the claw he licked against them.
Loki moved his hand to cup her right breast, making her gasp and nick his lip. She pulled the claws back in and kissed him, licking the tiny blood droplet before smearing it over his tongue. He took a step forward and slammed her against the wall, trapping her with his body.
It was hard to breathe now, but Teuta started panting, wanting him to crush her against the hard surface, wanting him to fuck her hard, right now. But he observed her frown and the way her lips trembled while she breathed heavily for a while, before lowering his head to place a very, very chaste kiss on her wet mouth.
“I need to get dressed.”
Was all he said before he separated himself and walked back into the bathroom, closing the doors behind him. Teuta slouched down, crouching and holding her face.
Lovely. Lovely job, Teuta, you’re a queen of holding back. Seriously. It’s a wonder you weren’t entirely fucked over by every single person you had sex with. Fuck.

She wiped her face with both of her palms and rose, shaking her hands to try to let go of the intense arousal, jumping up and down twice and then slapping herself twice, on both cheeks. Taking a very deep breath, she nodded and returned to the kitchen, where the children were washing the dishes, and Ura was wiping the table.
“Oh, I should’ve helped with that, sorry-“
“How did it go?”
“It was fine. I apologised.” She kept nodding, her hands on her hips. Ura stared at the intense red on her cheeks and just smiled, dumping the bread crumbs into the garbage bin.
“Good. You needed to. What did you say?”
“What I needed to. It went well, I think. Anyway, I should get ready.”
“I’ve sewn your trousers, I had extra thread.”
“Ura, you’re a life saver. Thank you so much, my dear friend.” Teuta went over and hugged her.
“We washed them,” the little girl replied.
“You are the most wonderful children in the entire universe, you three. Come here.” She beckoned them for a hug, kneeling down and loving the way those tiny arms of the girls crushed her neck. “My little hearts.”
Loki walked in and nodded at Ura, adjusting his belt. Teuta walked out to get ready.
“Will you hug us?” the boy asked him. Loki inhaled, feeling awkward. The boy did it for him, and wrapped his slim arms around Loki’s waist, pressing his cheek against his stomach. Loki slouched, patting his back. The two girls ran over and joined their brother, and he finally bent over, caressing their tiny forms.

Ura wiped her hands with the kitchen cloth, smiling. When the children separated, she told them to go get the potions in the leather bag. They ran out.
“Mistress Ura. Thank you for opening your home to us.”
“Loki.” She smiled gently. “If you ever betray Teuta, I will find you, drag you back here, and reopen those wounds; pour sulphur into them and stuff them with the shreds of your internal organs. Now, give me a hug.”
Loki chortled and hugged her tightly.
Teuta returned, adjusting the wool cape over her.
“We should get going, the Andromedans will arrive in less than two hours.”
He nodded as he watched her place her items back into his pocket universe.

“Ura. I always feel like I’m leaving something behind when I leave this place.”
“You are, my dear friend. But that’s how it has to be. My children… I can’t put them at risk.”
“I know, I know. Listen, we will sneak out, I cannot bear to look at their faces, I’ll cry, I just know it. I need to get out of this mess before… Well, before he attacks us all.”
“There are dark times coming, Teuta. I fear this is just the beginning.”

“He won’t succeed.”
Loki spoke. They looked at him.
“Thanos cannot succeed. He is not a god; he will never be a god. He is a mere tyrant, and we’ve overthrown mere tyrants, titans or not, for many millennia. Fear not.”
“I hope you’re right, Trickster,” Ura added. Teuta kissed her cheeks a few more times. “Until next time, my dear friend.”
“Be safe.”
“Always.”

Teuta gulped back a few tears, before turning to walk out the back doors of the cottage quietly, with Loki right behind her. The darkness would provide a good cover; upon entering yet another forest, Teuta looked back once more, to see the quiet hamlet again, with the tiniest prayer on her lips: that of wanting it to be more peaceful when she returned one day.
Loki looked on. The colder forests lay there, rising higher up; giving the mountain ahead of them a dark colour, with the very tips of the topmost trees still coloured by the setting sun. A much harder path awaited them, as reaching Byzantium through this wilderness meant they’d have to cross the mountain. He thought of the colder air and the bristle winds higher upwards, and felt deep satisfaction in his frost giant’s bones.
“I haven’t stretched in days,” Teuta spoke, sighing and cracking her neck. “I get all these different aches when I don’t do it. I’m getting old.”
“You’re a baby.”
“Maybe to you; but the human body cannot endure so much for so long.”
“That can be mended.”
“What do you mean?”
Loki smiled, looking at her.
“Come to Asgard with me after all this is done and I’ll show you.”
“Why not tell me now?”
He put a finger on his lips.
“It’s a secret, my little human. What is it that you say to me all the time? If you behave and be a good girl, I’ll tell you one day.”
Teuta chuckled, walking on and noticing that their path was curving upwards, for her gait started to get heavier. She tightened her backpack and prepared for the workout that was to follow. The good thing about these forests surrounding the Northern parts was that there were very few monsters here. They, foreign as they were, always went South, where it was warmer and there was more prey. The few animals residing here were the small introverts, sneaking and chittering quietly, observing the few brave travellers from their hidden little spots. Teuta was thinking about Asgard, now that he had mentioned it, and about Loki’s childhood She kept her jealousy suppressed; his mother seemed the kind of woman she would love to have around her while growing up. It ached deep inside, the realisation of what it truly meant to have a parent: somebody to help you learn to cope with your pain and to help you heal it. Somebody to help you truly learn that there is comfort in this black universe, not just barely holding on to whatever shreds of sanity needed to get through a situation. Why he would abandon that woman was beyond Teuta.

“What is Asgard like?” she asked.
Loki put a hand on the bark of a pine tree, caressing it fleetingly as they continued walking.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m interested. We have two days ahead of us, and you’re a good storyteller.”
“Yes, I am. I’m glad you recognise it.”
Teuta smiled, stopping walking.
“You were kind with Ura’s children. That was very sweet of you. Thank you.”
She leaned over, put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.
“A kiss on the cheek? What is this, a gentle romantic novel? I thought we were in another kind of a story.”
She laughed loudly.
“A story? You think we’re in a story?
“Of course. We all are, always. Now kiss me properly.”
“No. Come on, we can’t stop every five minutes.”
She licked her lips and started pacing on, with him right behind her. “Tell me about Asgard, storyteller.”
Loki observed the steady rhythm of her boots hitting the forest floor, and found himself dissociating by the repetitiveness of it, enhanced by the greenery surrounding them. Inhaling deeply, he opened his mouth.
“It is in many ways a perfectly developed world: shimmering shores meet the impending pine trees, which then delve deeper, darker into the more ancient trees – and further on, beyond the thinning nature, one’s gaze meets the golden capital, where I grew up. The best parts of it are beyond a shadow of a doubt its bustling streets, with its secrets.” Loki smiled. “Inconspicuous as some Asgardians were, sometimes they even managed to elude Heimdall. The best bars and hidden inns were mine and Thor’s favourite nights out. Thor…”
“Your brother?”
“Yes. Now, the palace is quite interesting: it took me years to learn most of its secrets, and I suspect there is still more to learn. Interwoven with witchcraft, certain rooms have aura of their own – well, all of them had it, until Father banned all outside magic. And now Einherjar roam the hallways. It’s unnecessary and idiotic, but nobody can oppose the ruler of Asgard.”
Teuta listened, thinking about what she’d seen while she was in the palace.
“I’m sure there are secrets that can be kept even from him.”
“Yes, of course, I think centuries of overruling everything had dulled him to things around him… In any case, Mother has secrets of her own.”
Teuta smiled.
“Which ones?”
“My darling little spy, I will never tell you.” Loki grinned, winking at her when she turned around to look at him, winking back. The smile slightly remained on his face when he realised he didn’t mind sharing this with her, despite being cautious. Even not minding something and someone had been quite a big step in the way he’d been living life lately. He “hmm’d” to himself silently.
“What is your brother like?”
“He’s big and dumb. I won’t talk about him.”
Teuta chuckled upon realising his jealousy – the immediate dip in his tone of voice and richness of his expressive words whenever he mentioned his brother. She wanted to play with him now.
“He’s the god of thunder, right? And of strength? I think I remember reading the sacred groves and trees bend to his might?”
She tightened her lips to hide the possible chuckle while still walking slightly ahead of him.
“The god of this and that, yes, there are many of us. The god of shrubbery, a bit of drizzle and arm-wrestling. It is no more than any of the lesser gods in our pantheon, Teuta.”
“I’d say it’s an impressive might he’s packing. What, he bested you in arm-wrestling?”
Loki sighed, catching up with her and looking at her profile.
“My strengths lie elsewhere. Thor is too idiotic to comprehend the enormous knowledge I’ve received even in my tender years, so he resorts to his physical advantages, which is quite obviously displaying his ineptitude.”
“At what?”
“Real power. It’s easier to lift things with your arms than with your mind, to put it simply.”
Teuta watched him now: the slight twitches of his lips and his eyebrows, obviously holding back from speaking his real thoughts. It was a sign that the two brothers had struggled in the past, but the apparent resentment on his face assured her the struggle was not very deep; most likely a bunch of typical sibling fights. She smiled.
“I wonder what’s it like…”
“What’s what like?”
“Having a brother to fight with.”
Loki looked at her, seeing sadness in her smile.
“What was-“
“And your mot-“
They both spoke at the same time. Teuta tried again.
“And your mother, what is she like?”
“Why are you so interested in my family? Is… your mother… Was… Ah. What was your childhood like?”
She closed her eyes for a second, knowing she could not ask him to divulge his whole life to her and then just hold back with her own.
“Back on Earth, it was nice. We had a small house on one of the islands. I grew up surrounded by simplicity and… hah, boats, I guess. And the stories of the famous pirates: hence my name. My father was the most loving father you can imagine. He was just a human, had a shop where he fixed every single vehicle you can imagine. A nobody, by our current standards. But he loved me.” She gulped back a few tears. “And he loved my mother. He loved her so much he couldn’t stop her. She took more and more journeys to the shore, working as a surgeon. And then she applied to the Intergalactical Centre of Permutations, having been so interested in foreign anatomy, leaving us to live alone… and it was fine, in the beginning. I don’t recall this, I was still very, very small, but I remember how she seemed different; when she started learning magic. With a hungry mind like hers, she went through some processes… which I know not much about, but she had started dealing with strains of magic that are clearly forbidden here on Andromeda. Back on Earth, nobody knew anything. And then she got transferred, and that’s where my first memories end. Father was growing sad, and alone. He would sit on the steps in front of our house and stare at the distant sea.”
Teuta wasn’t aware of her surroundings, she walked mindlessly on, completely lost to her memories. Loki listened quietly, sometimes placing a palm gently on the back of her backpack to nudge her on, not wanting to interrupt.
“I pieced certain things together. She met Ebony Maw somewhere along the way, and became a fanatic. She most likely met Thanos, having been so successful in her studies. I never did… Even when she came back to pick me up, she never openly pronounced his name. Kept calling him master, sire, lord, god… but never his name. That’s what’s been bothering me all these years, you know? If I had heard his name even once, even once, I would have known, childlike as I was, that it was not an all-powerful being, but a creature, with physical limits and limitations. All in all, there’s not much to say about it: she took me away to that ship. My father… he died of sadness, alone, in that house, without anybody to look after him.” Teuta began crying, tears rolling down her cheeks, but not batting an eyelash, just pacing on and gulping, while her voice became heavier. Soon, she began sobbing, and the words came out in bubbles, barely comprehensible. Still, she did not stop walking or look at Loki. “With no love and no comfort, probably blaming himself for allowing it. And there… now you know it; now you…”
She stopped, covering her face with her hands. The pain wringing itself through her chest could not be contained. No amount of her own troubles ached as much as that image of her father with his tired face, lost, silent, staring at the sea.
Loki stopped and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her against his chest and laying his head on her own, her face hidden against his tunic. The overwhelming sensation of wanting to absorb her pain and shield her was there – just like it had been when he first met her. Which was inherently strange for Loki and his demeanour, especially considering the need for detachment from other creatures. In the brooding phases of godship, it was increased; and after the urge to purge himself of the dirt and lust of his indulging phases, it was practically entirely overtaking.
But Teuta was here, with her soft, ethereal presence, crying, in pain, and against his chest was a logical place to have her, so he did, closing his eyes.
This was the part he was afraid of so much when he was in prison: what would he feel once the magic of her is lifted and revealed? Boredom? Apathy, again? Dulled sadness? What does he feel, what is this?
“I’m sorry. It’s… ugh… I don’t even know why I’m saying this. You’ll just use it against me. I’m so fucking stupid,” she mumbled, pushing herself away from him.
Hurtfully annoyed, in a mood to scold her, in a mood to grab her and talk sense into her, was apparently how he felt. He grabbed her wrists and brought her closer.
“You’re annoying with this pushing back, Teuta.”
“Just stop it. We can cooperate for some time, Loki, but I cannot possibly expect-“
That was it for him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and another one strongly around her neck and kissed her. He kneaded her lips painfully, pressing hard, pushing her nose with his and biting her plump lower lip. The tiny gasp of hers just urged him on, he bit harder and pressed her even closer. She managed to separate and stumble backwards, with a very mad expression. It was adorable. He couldn’t help but smirk. She bared her teeth and fisted her hands.
“That’s it. Fuck you,” was all she said as she continued stomping on, trying desperately to appease the rumbling sensation his rough kiss evoked: that she wanted to be crushed by him, for it was like a balm against the pain she carried all the time. It felt like a proper, strong flush of good booze straight to the brain, asserting itself over every other emotion; the one you shouldn’t trust… and she was afraid this was not to be trusted, either. The chuckle behind her made her squint at nothing.
“Oh come on, Teuta, you kissed me back.”
She didn’t reply.
“I did listen to you. I’m endlessly sorry you had to go through all of that, I really am. No child should be subjected to that sort of pain, my darling Teuta. If you want to talk, if you want to cry, I will listen to you and comf-“
“Oh you would fucking love that, wouldn’t you?!” she spat back. “Me being all vulnerable and needy so you can use the opportunity? No. Forget about it. It’s getting colder, and I want get a good distance from Edirne before sleeping.”

She tightened the neckline of her cape, for the coldness had started seeping inside, pecking her skin. Loki sighed to himself, understanding that the layers of that irritable personality of hers were needed for her survival as much as these layers of clothes were needed over her now.
But not for him.
Loki sped his light step, surpassing her and walking faster – inhaling the cold, allowing the harsher air to reach his lungs. She frowned, wondering if he was mad at her now.
Loki almost ran, almost floated like a lightweighted ghost, seemingly bouncing of the scattered moss-covered stones and barely cracking any leaves underneath his feet.
It had been hours of walking now, and Teuta’s feet ached, starting to get colder. There simply weren’t any boots that could keep the warmth from retreating from her limbs back to her body’s core. She allowed him to get a good distance from her, to gather her thoughts and force him to stop acting like he did – because she was not sure how long she could hold herself back.

He was seemingly unaffected by this weather.
It was not because of his particular godship; she clearly remembered Hermes hating cold winds.

Fifteen years ago, on the island of Samothrace in what used to be known as Greece, but was now a part of Southern Arkadia:

It was high, scorching summer, the sun incinerating the bright earth beneath it, bringing the scent of the sea as it passed over it all the way to the dry forests. Teuta was laughing while he tried to catch her – running across the temple ruins. Bits of her hair were already loosened from her elaborate twist: while it was still shorter, it had begun growing enough to pin it in such a manner. She was growing stronger. But not strong enough, because with any sort of strenuous activity, such as running, shorter strands were still sliding out of the clip. Teuta was good at running, her training making her agile and fast, but nobody could outrun the messenger god, so he was nearing, the steady whoosh of his barely perceptible wings shimmering through the air between them. Finally, Teuta reached the back wall of the temple, faced with a frieze containing a carved image of the head of a bull, with elaborate jewellery hanging down its ears. She stopped, breathing heavily and tracing the raised stone shapes. And then the whoosh of the wings grew silent, as a purring voice edged her ear.
“You could probably have done it. I have. With your new abilities, that which surpass my ordinary humans, you could leap over it.”
Hermes was talking about the ancient discipline of bull-leaping, where the participant had to grab the charging bull by its horns and somersault over it, landing into the arms of the person waiting behind the animal’s powerful form.
“You flatter me, my god.”
He removed a fallen strand of her hair and kissed the expanse of skin beneath her ear, making her shiver.
“Always, my succulent little peach.” He started planting kisses down her neck, each reminding her of feasting on a ripe piece of fruit – and just as a ripe piece of fruit, she started salivating and growing wet under his teasing lips. “Caught you.”
She turned around, facing him.
“I stopped by myself, Hermes.”
“Never the one to give up, are you? That’s what I like about you, Teuta; how you struggle. It makes subduing you that much sweeter.” He pushed her against the raised, irregular stone, making her back hurt. She winced.
“Oh but you like pain, don’t you?”
Teuta closed her eyes, knowing this mood of his. And she couldn’t have held herself too high above the acts themselves, for she allowed it. She willingly participated in his painful games, because it made her wet, and the release that followed the orgasms was cathartic. Those were just games, she reasoned, or rather, the orgasms reasoned – so the newfound discomfort had to be silenced. Even this day, she thought she’d get the relief from the nagging feeling in the back of her mind, the one telling her the entire relationship she built with this god was… dubious.
So his tearing of her dress open and twisting her nipples had to be just a sexy little roleplay, here in the abandoned temple of his family. Right?
Hermes stepped away, observing his handiwork, the red bruises all over the soft body of his juicy human; licking his lips. Here, shielded from the sun, his long blonde hair seemed darker, as did his bright blue eyes. Teuta stood like that, exposed, loving the way his gaze dragged goosebumps down her body wherever he looked, because it was him. It was a surprise that he wasn’t a god of anything more carnal, because he certainly looked like one: extremely tall, slim, with prominent muscles circling his entire body; with fat succulent lips which felt like heaven wrapped around her clit, and a shadow of his cheekbones reminding her of this stone digging into her back. And he was stone, just as strong and as hard: lodged inside her, he made her feel like she was putty and butter.
The past year of getting to know him hadn’t softened that impression; that of twelve months of an overindulging, incessant orgy, where he seemed a haven of unadulterated pleasures. Haven back home on Earth. Shielded from every impervious view of the Universe. Shielded from her mother.

Was this the price?
She smiled, inviting him over, allowing him to push her thighs open and slap his palm against her cunt, pulsating even before the skin made contact. Then he edged just one finger around her clit, and she whined, having become used to being made to beg, and to being fucked hard upon uttering the word.
It was when she started thinking that she would never be able to cum again without being treated like a turncoat whore that she started to wonder whether something was wrong. He slowly inched her towards that state of mind. And by gods, it felt good, it made her drip and drench anything beneath her in such a way it was the automatic reaction, spreading her own lips and pleading to be fucked good.
But he removed his hand and stepped away, smirking. In her memory, Teuta couldn’t recall all the insults and sickeningly sweet threats he uttered, but it made her start fucking herself and panting.
And then he raised his hands towards the skies, invoking his own immaculate form – growing darker in hue, his skin glistened wherever the tattoos appeared. His hair coiled tightly around the back of his head and his eyes turned the colour of the flaming seas. Teuta stared in awe, being attracted to a being in the height of his power, as always.
Even now, the memory of it was somewhat unclear, because she remembered him stepping forward and uttering the whisper of that ominous meaning, caressing the bull’s head behind her, before kneeling down to start licking the copious wet from her. Teuta’s own moans and loud whining seemed to echo through the ruins, reaching something that was thought to be long gone. And then, just when she was about to fall over the sweet edge of release – nothing. Blackness. Sleep. The feel of hard floor when she slumped down.

Upon coming to her senses, she saw the god Kadmilos holding Hermes by his throat, high up in the air, with the blonde trickster god’s legs dangling about helplessly. The see-through wings protruding from the length of his calves shed some of their feathers, which floated to the ground; since they were barely perceptible, through them the farther opening of the temple seemed as if watched through a faraway smoke curtain. She couldn’t understand what the mighty deity yelled about, for they spoke in that tongue long forgotten by the humans. But he was obviously mad. Teuta slowly retreated to crouch by the wall, trying to fasten her torn dress, trying to hide.
It subsided quickly, as Kadmilos chanted on, incomprehensible but very rhythmical: recitation in hexameter, unmistakable and powerful.
Slowly, very slowly, the sunlight peering from outside grew darker. Hermes was dropped on the ground where he coughed and spat out, trying to massage his constricted throat, before yelling insults back. Kadmilos raised his monstrous chin up, let out a low sound of disapproval and turned to exit, before dissipating into the darkening air outside.
Teuta ran to Hermes, trying to comfort him and ask him what happened. He pushed her away and rose to his feet. He retained his darkened form, with his sunset eyes glaring at her. Not answering a single question, he started walking away, with Teuta scrambling to catch up with him.
Outside the temple, the skies grew dark and criss-crossed with lighting. Hideously cold wind now swept the area of sparse, yellowing grass and scented rosemary shrubs, ripping the dried plants from their homeground and swirling them about in the air. Teuta could barely tighten the light fabric around herself. Hermes stomped on in front of her, his hair plastered to his bare back, cursing all the way down to the sea. The wind hadn’t stopped, cooling the air to a temperature akin to the Northern Arkadia with its evergreen winters.
“I hate it. I fucking hate the wind. I fucking hate winter, cold and their pitiful, disgusting, bulky bastards of gods. Hurry up, human! I don’t have the time to look after you!”

It wasn’t the first time that happened. In the quest for finding a greater power, Hermes angered many gods. Sometimes he was punished by famine sweeping through the villages under his protection. Other times his limbs were ripped apart, only to be brought together after he sidled to the appropriate deities. And most often, he was punished by the thing he hated most: the cold, frost-bitten sensations which would consume him and everything around him for many months.
It was that particular induced winter that he grew distant, and even Teuta’s whorish pleading barely reached him anymore. That was the eve of their final break-up.

Now, back in another cold forest with another trickster god:

Teuta watched Loki’s lithe movements as he was sprinting toward the top of the mountain. The night, now dark around them, forced her to use her lenses to see in the blackness. The muted colours allowed for his glistening black hair to sway like a dancing fae farther away. He was speeding up until even she, with her magnifying gaze, couldn’t see him anymore. Teuta sighed, her mind flooded with the beginning of what would be torturous comparisons to her ex. She was endlessly annoyed and turned on by the similarities, and fully baffled and aroused by what seemed to be differences… But she was thinking of deceits of various sorts.
It was infinitesimally colder at night, with no daylight to alleviate the pungent feel of the wind. It had not subsided, and in the darkness, it seemed to be even louder. Teuta was shivering, but forced herself to hurry on and find her current evading partner.

She could see the tiniest bit of clearing amongst the trees where a large rock protruded from the otherwise flatter ground, and on the rock stood a tall, gauntly creature, its arms spread to the billowing night around him, the wind thrashing his wild black hair against his cerulean skin.
Next to his feet was Loki’s shirt and tunic. Teuta took his tunic and held it tightly between her clenched palms, all the while staring at him open-mouthed. The back of his naked torso was interwoven with delicate ridges akin to tattoos, swirling and criss-crossing in the manner her own faked ones had done just a few months ago. Apart from their navy hue, his skin looked like a comforting, crisp, safe night… something she longed for now.
“So this is your godship, Jotunn.”
He turned his head around and bore his eyes into her, slightly making her gasp, as they were bright, bright red, even distilled through her lenses. She frowned, clutching his tunic even tighter, still shivering from the cold.

Loki couldn’t hold it any longer, the crisp air smelt like comfort, like the fading dream you want to hold on to, so he ran to it until the night surrounded them. And then he felt it – the first icy breath of the winter wind. Gods, how good that felt. In this bustling, ever-moving universe, that was true stillness, true peace. It wasn’t his default form and expression, no; he was Aesir as much as he was Jotunn; however, there was something about the dark ice, as it burst out of the membranes within his veins, something about the way it flooded not only body, but the mind – that brought quietude from the effervescent voices and tranquillity from the incessant movement of creatures around him.
Except this quiet little spy behind him, with the sound of her sweet little breath and the barely perceivable clank of her shivering teeth. It made him smile. And then, looking on across the tree tops below him, his smile washed out. She would see him like this, and she would shiver more, her face would contort with fear and disgust. He knew that expression well: it was the same, whether painted on the aristocratic lesser Vanir, or the trembling child in the back of the dirty alley on Xandar.

Teuta held his still mildly warm tunic, and had a most adorable frown above her silver-coated eyes, but otherwise, nothing. Expressionless. Except for her shivering.
“You are cold.”
“No shit, Loki, we’re in the ice region. I don’t know what I had thought of when I heard you had relatives on Jotunheimr… God, I’m slow sometimes. So, bluebell, I’m freezing and I need rest. I’m going to go find a place to sleep and you can continue-“
He jumped down and grabbed her wrist.
“You’re not scared of me?”
“Of course I am. I am always scared of you.”
He squinted, scouring her face for truth.
“What does that mean?” He spoke the words more quietly, and Teuta thought she heard a little boy’s voice uttering it.
“Does this make you dumber?” She pinched the blue skin on his shoulder, and then, as if caught by another thought, smoothed her fingers up towards his neck. That light touch gave Loki goosebumps, which he tried to hide.
“Hmm,” she hummed to herself.
“What?”
“Velvety. And warm. You’re warm.”
“Well yes, it doesn’t really affect me. If anything, it’s a pleasurable breeze when I’m transformed. Oh, look at you…” He said through a smile, observing her trembling to the point where she couldn’t control it any longer and stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her. She didn’t even fight it, just pulled her shoulders in so she was even smaller and pressed her face against his skin.
“Come, there’s most likely more than one grotto around these parts.” He spoke softly, pulling her hand. She followed, focused on the warmth emanating from him. She had expected him to be cold: that was the universal perception of a Jotunn, cold as fuck, right? Naturally, their innate magical ability to wield ice meant they could give you frostbites, had they wanted to.
But the similarities in their DNA had to mean they were humanoid; therefore, they had to have hot blood.
That realisation, paired with how dark his skin looked now gave Teuta’s womb a wholly new sensation. No, Teuta. She tried, she tried hard not to imagine that skin slapping against her naked one; so she had to revert to focusing on how cold she was, and started picking up broken branches of trees for the fire.

Chapter Text

Loki found his little grotto and ushered her in, where she started arranging her tinder collection to light a warming fire inside the stony cave. It was barren, with a bit of dirt and greenery brought in by the wind. He picked up the fallen leaves and brought it to her pile, snapping his fingers and lighting the kindling. She slouched, realising she hadn’t thought of that, and placed the firestones down.
“Right.” She sighed. “Thank you.”
He crouched down opposite her and blew at the sparkling flames, which then increased. The widened crouch, his naked blue torso, the reflection of fire enhancing his already bright eyes… It was almost too much. Her lenses retreated, and he was faced with the blue of her irises mirroring his skin. His lips stretched into a smirk.
“What is it?”
She sat down, leaning on the stone wall behind her, still staring at him. The fire, now fully lit, displayed the irregular shapes of dolomite stones, the dome of the cave rising above them, and the dark, ominous exit with the black night outside.
“Can you burn, like this?” She waved a relaxed hand at his body.
“Of course. There are theories that we burn more easily with our properties.”
“Hmm.” She smiled. He smiled back.
“Why, do you want to push me into this fire?”
“You never know, trickster.”
He chuckled, slowly realising that she wasn’t appalled. He hadn’t known what it was that he saw in her, purely because she hadn’t made up her mind yet about this display of power, but it was thought-provoking.
“I’m hungry. Did we finish all of the food Ura gave us?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Don’t you have anything in that pocket of yours?”
“I can’t. Ants. I told you so already. There was an incident once, where they got in because I’d left the portal open and I spent months tracking the little beasts down. I’ve never been itchier in my life.”
Teuta laughed.
“Are you still cold?”
“The fire helps a little, but… it is what it is. I’ll be fine.”
Teuta looked at the exit, hearing wind howling outside, and raising the collar of her cape to her chin.
“Teuta?”
“Hmm?”
“Do I not disgust you?”
Loki was poking at the fire with a small stick, not looking directly at her.
“Of course you do, slime ball. But, where are your horns? I know your people have horns.”
He smiled, now raising his hands and smoothing them over his hair.
“They’re not my people, this is just an unavoidable legacy.”
As he spoke, protrusions on his head revealed themselves. They were the colour of dirty ivory, slightly hooking backwards. Thick at the bottom, they grew thinner at their blunt tips. Teuta’s eyes grew glassy as she jumped forward, closer to him, extending her hand to touch them. He caught her wrist and slowly shook his head.
“Why?”
Loki licked his lips.
“You’re not allowed to.”
“Why not?” She pulled her hand to herself and rubbed her wrist.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
She grinned.
“You’re so dramatic, Loki. Come on, tell me!”
He smiled and sat further away, also leaning on the wall. He couldn’t do it. Despite wanting her, that would be a level of intimacy he wasn’t ready for. For a split second, the idea that Teuta would wrap her fingers around a horn and stroke it was a shrill thrill of pleasure anticipated, but, ever since he learned of the effect it had on him, he simply didn’t allow anyone to do it.
His mother knew nothing of it; his father had vague ideas and memories of that part of Jotunn anatomy, but nobody knew definitively. Heimdall refuse to speak of such frivolities.
So, upon his first journeys to his ancestral home, he asked, and got his answer: a Jotunn’s horns are not only innate, skeletal weapons and a natural defence; they are filled with nerve endings that could read something of the quality of the air, pick up on faraway currents of the cold and the warmth, serving as a reading device where their skin would fail. The increased sensitivity meant that they could send nerve signals quite clearly. As with all the body parts capable of picking up on the sensation of a touch, they were quite often a strong erogenous zone.
It was such a very personal connection, something so intimate Loki never allowed anyone to hold him like that. Except for Amora, after the incredible number of times she tried to do it. That only made him more pliable to her ridiculously poisonous magic.
While not fully defiled by that act, Loki started to felt a natural repulsion to anybody touching him there. So he didn’t reply, just continued playing with the fire. Teuta saw the flicker of distancing himself, of balking away when she tried. It was interesting.
“Well, fine, I can respect that. That’s alright, I guess.”
She said, extending her hand to pat his shoulder. His eyes traced her hand the whole time. And then he looked at her eyes. Teuta was fast, her reflexes meticulously trained to a near perfection – and if he had been anything less than a god, she would have succeeded in trying to quickly grab the horn nearer to her, but he slapped her hand away. She chuckled and continued sitting like that, closer to him. He shook his head, with that navy blue smirk stretching his cheeks.
Now it was not merely interesting to Teuta, it was becoming entertaining. She loved a good challenge. She pursed her lips and tutted at him.
“What are you doing, little human? I said no.”
“But why, Loki, why? That’s all I’m asking.”
He noticed the glint in her eyes. That was a child who never had Frigga glare at her when she did something she knew she shouldn’t do. Alas, Loki wouldn’t do it either. The embers of the fire danced around as much as her little mischievous determination, and oh baby, he could just taste it.
“Why are you so interested in this? It’s just a pair of horns. They’re hard, they have ridges; thicker at the bottom, erect and slightly curvy at the top. The girth would fit perfectly into a palm of your size if you were to wrap your fingers around one. Does that satisfy you?”
As he kept speaking, Teuta’s lips stretched into a grin. She observed his teasing nature and how it was beautifully expressed in this blue form, almost as if that was his sweet secret face behind the mischief.
“Very subtle, Loki. No, I do not want to wrap my hand around your metaphorical cock. I just wanted to feel the texture, considering your skin is velvety. Must be thicker to endure more…”
She spoke, taking his hand into hers and sliding her fingers up and down the back of it. He turned his arm and allowed her to slide her gentle finger up its length. Teuta looked at the ridges on his chest.
“Do these have meaning?”
“They mark one’s belonging to a clan. Like a name.”
“And what is your name?” She hadn’t even realised she’d scooted even closer to him to trace her fingers across the markings, observing how his chest heaved up and down with each breath. He allowed her to do that, his eyes roaming her face.
“Loki Laufeyson. Laufey was my biological mother. Jotunnheimr is a matriarchal society.”
“Ahh, Laufeyson!” She smiled, remembering that was how he’d presented himself when they were at the Tehran Interversal. By gods, his chest is like stone. She splayed her opened palm across his skin and looked at him. He lifted his gaze from her lips to her eyes. Teuta swallowed a mouthful of saliva. What was it about the idea of licking his skin that made her salivate this much? It was becoming a problem. And then she had a most intrusive image of flicking her tongue over the tip of his horn and looked at it instinctively, licking her lips. It was entrancing for Loki, reading that clear unspoken idea on her face. He leaned over to her and sighed. His breath was warm on her face.
“What are you doing?” She leaned back a bit, away from him. He continued inching closer, and now she leaned on her palms behind her back, trying to get away. After a few long seconds, he chuckled and gave up, lowering his head down and placing his forehead on her stomach. His laugh vibrated through her.
“Nothing, my little human.”
His horns were now almost touching the underside of her breasts, and she lifted a hand to grab one, but he could feel it, and moved away, shaking his head and laughing to himself. There was a loud howl of the wind, and some of it creeped inside, stirring the flames. Teuta shivered.
“You would have ended up frozen if you had tried to track me down on that world.”
“Sheesh, I definitely would.”
“There are deep caves and caverns, a lot of them, mostly naturally occurring, with hot springs boiling at their cores. They’re quite warm and cozy. Before all of this intergalactical… connectedness, the giants travelled alone, their large gaits traversing the frozen mountains. They were nomads, and loners. My ancestors were hermits, living their lives breathing in travelling, and breathing out journey. Quite often, the icy winds would pierce through even this thick skin of ours, and one would find themselves longing for a cover of warmth. So they made those caves their bedchambers, often leaving necessary items behind for someone else. Entering inside to take refuge in the heated mineral fumes, they would bathe their weariness away and sleep the subterfuge sleep of a perfect oneirophrenic dreamer.”
Teuta brought her chin to her knees and hugged them, listening.
“And quite often, they would encounter someone else in those caves. Like I said, pilgrims and wayfarers were scattered everywhere. Lonely as they were, and unsated, they would find themselves entranced by the heat and by the scent of the damp earth, which would enhance the smell of another being, someone just like them. A traveller would enter, seeing a Frost Giantess naked, in the bath, her arms spread open on the ledge of the underground pond. The smell of her breath, the indoles in her opulent sweat would mix with the odour of the bubbling water, arousing every ounce of his lonely, craving senses. She wouldn’t have hidden herself, having already been softened and indulged in the warmth, relaxed and wet from her head to her toes. The traveller would strip, showcasing his weary, stiff body and slowly joined her in the opulent bath. There’s not much room to think about the circumstances of his life when faced with the mind-numbing image of that perfect pair of breasts peeking out of the steaming water. Just there for his taking, for his kneading and sucking. And he would lift her to the ledge to spread her thick thighs and have his nose guide him to the lush, rich scent of her sex. He would bury his nose there and inhale all she has to offer before making her his meal; to lick her clit and slick his tongue inside her, to circle her oozing walls and listen to a blood-curdling moan. Sometimes, that was enough, even.”

Teuta’s arms dropped down her sides, her knees still bent and slightly trembling. The lustrous hum in his voice made it worse. It licked its way inside her ears and right down to her cunt. It was prickled, and swollen, and oozing the worst of her vices, pure lust. She swore she could feel it pulsate in his direction. Loki was lost to her, seemingly, staring at the fire or the black night outside while talking, squinting and cocking his head. Has anybody ever orgasmed from listening to someone’s voice? Teuta could have been the first one to perhaps do it, based on her rhythmic clenches she could barely control.
Except for her cold body. By gods, even imagining a hot spring to douse herself in sounded like heaven. Let alone have Loki fuck her in his blue form, like a mythical beast, and lapping at her wetness until she passed out from the sensation. She clearly remembered how good he was at it.
“…Teuta?”
“Hmm? I’m listening, sorry.”
“You’re cold,” he said softly, flicking his fingers to increase the flames. She smiled, hugging her knees tightly so she would keep to herself and not crawl over to ride him.
“We should sleep.” She inhaled deeply, reaching for her backpack to pull her thin mat out and spread it next to the fire. He nodded and pulled his thicker one out of his pocket dimension.
“Do you, by any chance, have a blanket in there?”
“I didn’t need one. Sorry.”
She laid down, facing him. Flames illuminated his sprawled form. He laid on his forearm, playing with a tiny wave of seidr as she closed her eyes, trying to invite sleep.
In the dark behind her eyelids, without the sound of his voice warming her, it was even colder. Even though she wrapped her cape around herself, it had already seeped into her bones, giving her the feeling of discomfort. She cursed the Andromedans for coming to Edirne – if they had not, she and Loki could have gone the longer, but easier route, around the mountain, and avoided the colds of the early winter.
It had been over an hour, and she sighed, trying to shift herself into a more comfortable position. It didn’t work. After several attempts, she opened her eyes. He’d pulled on his tunic, laid on his back, hands behind his head, eyes closed. Goddamn him, he’s warm enough to sleep. The weariness only made it worse; even her arousal was gone, and the aches from the walking increased.
“Teuta?”
“Yes?”
“Come here.” He tapped the side of his mat.
“Why?”
“I’ll keep you warm. You need to sleep. Don’t argue with me.”
She bit her lip, not even having the will to oppose him, just got up and laid close enough, but turned her back on him. He let out a quiet chortle and wrapped his arm around her stomach, pulling her against him. He was so warm she let out a sigh of relief, clenching her entire body into even a smaller form. He put his leg over her thigh, and she could feel warmth enveloping her.
Loki watched her hands wrap around his blue one with a smile. She smelt wonderfully, the wind trapped in her hair and the troubled, lemony sweat wafting off of her skin. It was comfort.
Loki had added a new desire to his collection from the past few days: first he wanted her to kiss him in the morning. Then he wanted her to snog him throughout the afternoon, and now, now he needed her to press her soft lips against his for those few seconds of falling asleep. So he bent over and planted one over her temple.
Teuta allowed the cozy feeling of being snuggled to reach those aching, shivering bones. And it did, although slowly. Not having the strength to reprimand him, she only groaned softly when he started kissing her temple, her ear, her hairline. It made him chuckle, but not stop. The bastard used the opportunity, and her dumb, stupid, idiotic little heart fluttered traitorously throughout her warmed chest, joining in with the crime of her traitorous sex which already betrayed her just hours ago, begging for attention.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“My beautiful little human.”
She heard him whisper, and it made her want to snuggle even closer. And slap him.

But Teuta started drifting off, before feeling a weight of something over herself. Opening one eye, she saw a heavy, thick blanket envelop her. She huffed loudly and turned to face him, with her sleepy eyes. He grinned.
“You’re a big fat liar, Loki,” she mumbled, but shoved her face against his warm chest nonetheless. He, much like that blanket, enveloped her entirely in his long arms.
The wind was still howling outside, and the fire was crackling behind her. Had she ever felt this warm before? The last thought Teuta couldn’t deal with was that of safety. Here, deep in the peak of the lonely wilderness, fully hidden inside the cave and under the blanket and beneath his body, was there ever a spot in the universe that was safer than this?

She was sleeping so soundly that Thanos’ Sanctuary II. could have easily landed on top of that cave, and she would not wake. So she barely reacted to him rising up, only groaned lightly in her sleep at the loss of the warmth of his body. He smiled, exiting the cave. The sky was grey, and it was possible it would rain soon, making their journey harder.
Loki stretched and inhaled the air, wonderfully clean and crispy after the smoke in that cave behind him. Standing alone for some time and clearing his mind, he was reminded of Teuta, sleeping tightly under the blanket, wonderfully relaxed and breathing evenly, there, just there, his to hold. So he turned around and slid back inside, to lie down and stare at her. He would have to wake her up soon enough, as they had to get down the other side of the mountain and onwards, to Byzantium.
As soon as he laid next to her, she let out a soft moan and scooted over him, turning him on his back and splaying her leg over his thighs, before lowering her head right above his heart.
“Teuta?” he called, gently rubbing her back. It took a few attempts for him to hear her sharp inhale and smacking of lips. She peered up at him and groaned, quickly laying her head back down and closing her eyes.
“We have to get going, little spy. Spying awaits us.”
“Ungh. Must we?” she mumbled to herself, before rolling off and laying on her back. She looked at him, and then he saw it. Her sleepy eyes and messy hair, and the way her soft lips glistened when she licked the dryness off. Loki felt his cock twitch, he wanted to nuzzle her body and spread her thighs and fuck her into being awake. He rolled over her, wrapping his fingers around her throat and kissing her. She moaned, swallowing against his grip before hesitantly testing how her tongue would feel against his lips.

Still not fully awake and aware of what she was doing, she eased into the kiss, and it rumbled through each and every one of her senses, arousing her into the idea she was still dreaming; so she allowed his hands to roam her body, to slide under her shirt and squeeze her breasts, thumbs flicking over her nipples. Loki drank her moans and coaxed more out, already dreading the acidic slide of pure pain down his shaft as he longed to guide it inside her. She spread her legs apart and wrapped one around his bum, dragging that warm sex right against the bulge in his trousers. It was too much, the friction and the pressure made him bite her chin and huff out the discomfort, as he ground against her earnestly. The pain increased, making him grunt and grab that soft, soft cunt of hers with his hand; almost as if he was surprised at the fact he could simply slide his fingers inside her leggings and inside her. She was so wonderfully wet for him, her labia pliable and soft and slippery; and her delightful sex adjusted around the girth of his two fingers.
The clench was too much: the way she squeezed and pulled him inside was too much for him to handle. He could feel again the viscous sensation of something trying to push through the hilt of his cock. It burned; that pure, mellow, soft desire to have it in place of his fingers. She moaned a quiet, gasping moan when he kissed her.
Teuta was awake, now at least, when she realised the god’s fingers were inside of her; but it was so sweet and sexy and indulging she had no wish to stop it. In fact, if he could continue sliding them inside at that soft, slow rhythm, that would be just perfect. She lifted her hands and held the back of his neck for the duration of that languid kiss, letting out a sexy little whimper when he curled his fingers inside of her. Loki could barely focus, between the smoothness of this morning, silkiness of her perfectly sticky cunt and that aching inside him, which seemed to stretch all the way to his upper stomach. He hissed when she whimpered and bit her lip, feeling some semblance of satisfaction when the tissue skidded under his teeth. And she whimpered again at that pain, her tongue sticking out for the first letter of his name. He let go, needing to hear it. And she whispered it, in that manner of pure letting go. Her thighs fell fully open as she undulated her hips in motion with his perfectly controlled thrusts.
Hissing again, this time from his own discomfort, he winced. And then she opened her eyes to look at him.
She noticed that he’d changed his form back to his Aesir one, and the green eyes once again roamed her face. Her eyebrows contorted into a pleading expression from how impossibly wanton his beauty made her, so she threw her head back and whined, grabbing the wrist of the hand he was fucking her with and impaling herself on his curled fingers.
She watched again his expression, and it was changing, the eye twitch, the eyebrows, his mouth curling and tightening in discomfort; but she was so close, so impossibly close to that sweet release she allowed herself to moan loudly and fall over the edge, slowly relaxing back down. Loki gasped loudly and winced and moved away to bend over and hold his stomach.

Her orgasm was ruined by that image, barely reaching her thighs. She hitched a breath and sighed quietly, before leaning over to him.
“What is wrong?” she panted, still calming down.
“Nothing.”
She put a hand on his shoulder.
“What… is… did I hurt you somehow?”
“I said it’s nothing,” he said, a bit louder, and removed her hand to get up. She was entirely confused, unsated, barely awake. She watched him fasten his tunic and braid his hair.
“Loki, what just happened?”
He sighed, putting his hand on his hips, only then turning around to look at her.
“I… I’m not feeling well. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“What… what do you mean? You’ve just… you’ve just finger-fucked me then balked away. It’s clearly got something to do with me.”
“It does not. I told you this already. Do not make me repeat myself.”
She wrung her fingers together, looking at them for a moment. He was lying to her. Is… Did he find her repulsive somehow? After all, she was dirty, with cold sweat ruining her skin from all the hiking yesterday… Perhaps she smelt like a dead animal and he only realised it when he was close to her. He was a god, after all, and quite keen on repeating that fact very often.
She was just a dirty human, and quite a lowly one at that, not as lavish as… Lorelei and those other women he indulged in. Teuta cleared her throat, her face flushed not only with her ruined orgasm, but with another kind of embarrassment which brought her enough heat to shed the blanket from herself and get up, grabbing and attaching her breastplate. Loki finished adjusting everything, and looked at her. She was gulping and fidgeting with her clothes.
“Teuta, I-“
“It’s uhh, it’s okay actually, no worries,” she raised her palm in front of herself, “I won’t bother you, I can feel you don’t won’t to talk about whatever this was. Uhh, could you place the blanket-“
“No, I wanted to-“
“Loki. It’s fine, I’m fine. We have a good hike awaiting us, we should not waste daylight. Thank you for waking me.”
She didn’t look at him anymore, just lifted her backpack and fastened it tightly, before walking out. He gritted his teeth and followed her.

“It does look beautiful in the morning, doesn’t it?” she suddenly said. He was confused at her change of tone.
“It… yes. It’s a nice scenery. Looks like it will rain soon.”
“Ooh, we should definitely hurry up.” She smiled at nothing, nodding quickly before going back around the cave to cross another smaller protruding rock and head on down the other side of the mountain.
He walked quietly next to her, confused by her chirpy voice. It was a newfound way to deal with the barrage of intrusive thoughts which kept her cheeks blushed.
“Honestly, if I was just a normal person, I think I would take up hiking. This air, cold as it is, would surely help clean one’s head, wouldn’t it?”
You know how Hermes always wanted you to take your baths. This is why.
“Don’t you agree, Loki?”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Oh look, was that a deer? Imagine, an actual deer, on Andromeda!”
She chuckled, horribly, as they were trotting down through a thicket of trees.
This is it – you know you cannot be more than a pastime. Well, if you lived for so long and your dense, dense physical manifestation of a god’s body was so perfect it surpassed other humanoids, you would have also held them in low regard, wouldn’t you? He is bored. And depressed. Perhaps even trying to mask it by entertaining himself with you, Teuta.
“Have you ever been to Byzantium, Loki?”
“Yes, naturally. It’s beautiful.”
You are beautiful, Loki. So much so it breaks me apart. Imagine that, Teuta, you feared his betrayal because you honestly thought you could mean more than you could possibly mean. The truth is far more petrifying and painful than that. And simpler. You’ve not even managed to entertain him. Her mind blared on.
“I’ve never been anywhere near your guild, though,” he spoke, trying to see why she had this unmoving expression of being calm, all the while fidgeting with her claws against the hem of her cape.
“That’s because it’s hidden.” She smiled at him, although her smile slightly washed out, very fast. She was hurt, he realised. Fuck. In his haste to alleviate the pain, and indeed, the frustration, he didn’t even think about her. Could he truly be that much of a selfish fuckup, like his brother claimed he was?
…But was he, truly? This hadn’t happened to him, ever. For the better part of the decade, since he’d left Amora’s den of iniquities, his appetite was gone. Fully. Sometimes, it came close to being mildly aroused, slightly more interested in the act before his eyes if a creature was savoury enough, but never this. Sweet Norns, he knew he needed to chase this. Chase this woman walking next to him.

Fifteen years ago, on Xandar:

The room felt stuffy. Smelt stuffy. Loki swore he could even taste the dried cum on his dry lips. It was hideous. He tried moving his arm, which was trapped under a random boy’s naked back. Pulling it out, he looked around himself: bodies of five people he could barely remember laid around the floor, in different states of undress; a few sleeping sighs painting the otherwise quiet room. …or it would’ve been quiet if it wasn’t for Amora, in her purple silky robe, tracing a calf of one of the women laying next to her. The violet hue of her own magic glistened in the dark air. She was giving her dark, sexy dreams; drinking from that well of desire always proved to be fruitful for the beautiful seductress, and she smiled at him, beckoning him to join her. And he did, crawling over the limbs and ignoring the grunts of the sleeping ones to join his seidr with hers.
Loki was wondering why it was bland. The source, somebody’s life energy uplifted by the pure lust was normally like a bite into a hot, savoury meal when one was starving: perfectly satisfying, wholly beautiful, poetic and animalistic at the same time.

But not now. He winced and dragged his hand away.
“What is wrong, my beautiful god?” Her husky, soft voice edged inside his mind.
“I’m bored.”
“Want to up the stakes? Have her dream of wallowing in the dirt, craving even the mud beneath your soles? I feel like we haven’t had enough exploration of the basest, my sweet. I think I’ll have Lorelei build these beauties a room of decay. I need to see does the force increase if met with the most desperate of pleas-“
His lips twitched as he looked away.
“Amora. I am bored. It is ridiculously boring.”
“What then?” She stopped drinking and caressed his cheek with her palm. He could smell blood wafting off of her skin. It wasn’t hers. Frowning, he moved his head away. She smiled and knelt on the sleeping girl’s back, undoubtedly causing immense pain, because the girl whined in her sleep and clenched her fists. Amora cocked her head, continuing to smile at him. One could easily be fooled into thinking that was a smile of sympathy.
“I see now. You need my attention. Baby, tie your hands behind your back: let me love you.”
“It isn’t fucking love, witch.”

He scowled, getting up and looking around himself to try and find a bathroom in this stranger’s house. With no memory of how he got there, he exited the bedroom and walked inside the small adjoined bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. There was a flush to his chest, from the excess of magic. It looked awful on his milky skin. Even his cheeks had a purplish glow, making him look sick. He frosted, sighing with relief once the gluttonous Aesir in the mirror changed to this calming cerulean Jotunn. Splashing water on his face, he sighed again, craving water. Soon, he unscrewed the pipe to the maximum and was taking large handfuls of the beautiful, comforting stream, drinking it and pouring it over his hair. Wincing again with the flashback memory of a boy crying and pleading Amora to stop it, please, he yelled out, loudly – and all the dripping water on him frosted into pure ice. Now, the image in the mirror seemed a statue with icicles hanging off his face and the tips of hardened locks.

Now, in the wilderness beyond Edirne, on the slope of a mountain:

Teuta was horrible at hiding her emotions around him, very rarely succeeding in outsmarting the god. It took a great deal of concentration, something she could achieve – if she set her mind to it, but surely not when he made her feel unworthy. So Loki observed how her eyebrows twitched and how she tightened her full lips into a wrinkled line whenever he leant his head to look at her face. Her chirpy monologues couldn’t hide that. If anything, it was entirely funny to him, beyond the fact he knew she was hurt. Without realising the scope of what it was exactly that she felt, he smiled, truthfully, and pulled her hand to lock her in a surprise hug, while she yelped and stiffened from the quick movement.
“Lok-“
She tried, but he crushed her even tighter, before separating and looking at her complete confusion.
“I need my morning kiss. You’ve made me yearn for the simplicity of a morning kiss. Give it to me.”
She pushed him away, before straightening the wrinkles on her cape and shaking her head.
“I’m not your fucking pet! Besides, you’ve already gotten it, didn’t you?” she hissed, walking on in front of him. He laughed and hurried to catch up with her, almost pouncing her again.
“That was just a tasty pre-emption of a proper rousing-“
She shivered at how that line vibrated through her. She gritted her teeth and halted in place, glaring at him.
“-That? That, your little performance of utter disgust is an introduction into what I should be expecting from you?” She raised her eyebrows and laughed. It was fake. “No, thank you. There should be a barrage of whores for you in Byzantium. God knows you love them, and God knows they won’t care for your insults.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
She shook her head and wanted to continue walking, but he gripped her wrist, holding her in place. She sighed.
“I’m not fucking blind, Loki, I’m not stupid. It’s alright. Truly, it is. Entertaining, and helped me get through the night, and I guess… I guess it wasn’t that bad, either, but I truly am alright with you doing whatever you need to do when we get there. We’re partners; if you need to relieve yourself of the excess energy, do it. We can meet up for dinner. I’ll have to go to the guild and bid for jobs, anyway.”
He squinted, trying to discern what it was she was talking about. Clearly, she thought he was entertaining himself with her – which was expected from a girl with her frame of mind and their past, but this other thing, disgust, that she mentioned… that was not obvious. He thought on, about what took place, and how he reacted. And then he got it.
Closing his eyes and sighing, shaking his head, he let go of her wrist, and immediately, she patted his shoulder.
“Come, I’d like to get there before afternoon, I think we can do it.”
Teuta started to feel better, thinking she got some vital thing off of her chest by saying this. The weird infatuation with him, and that awful feeling of safety last night, when he held her and he kissed her entire face and kept her warm and cozy… that ought to go away soon enough, as well.

Loki was now vacillating between smothering that hurt in her completely or by allowing time to offer him solutions of a more lasting nature. Either way, it meant he had to tell her about his issue, something he’d desperately hoped could be avoided. Alas, the truth was always more boring and burdening than anything else.
Not now, he decided. There will be time. However, seeing her adorable determination and a new spring in her step made him hold back a chuckle. Why she thought he found her disgusting was beyond him. She’s such a little girl. My hurt, adorable little human who needs to be coddled and kissed and held and licked thoroughly.

Soon, the thicket of trees starting giving way to flatter ground, as they descended the wilderness and approached the river. On the other side lay the southern walls of the vast city of Byzantium.
Not so much a fortification as it was an aesthetic reminiscence of the powerful Istanbul from Earth, whose ramparts and watchtowers had already fallen apart, most likely.
The bridge across the river was stone-paved, now trodden enough to resemble the ones back on Teuta’s home, smooth under her boots. She loved this city: unlike Shangri-La, it was overridden with shady characters, making her feel more at home with whatever fucked-up state of mind she entered the city in. Last time, she arrived completely drunk, on the back of a horse, awaiting Rocket to share the bountiful loot she escaped Samarqand with. He berated her, of course, but agreed on going celebrating; and she had the loveliest end of evening with a couple of Xandarian assassins. Teuta smiled at the memory, deciding to definitely go out and take her mind off of the latest embarrassing incidents.

Passing through the elaborately arched city gates, she sighed and smiled, finally seeing the great Byzantium laying ahead of her.

Chapter Text

“What is it?”
Loki asked, having been unusually silent the past hour. She didn’t mind it this time, barely even looking at him.
“I just always start feeling better when I come here. Always; no matter how shitty a state I arrive in, this city has the power to wring it out of me. Gahh, look, dancers!” She pointed to a group of contortionists performing at the end of the alley. There was a crowd around them. “Don’t you just love it?”
“Hmm, yeah. They’re good.”
They walked on, with Loki looking around himself.
“We need to check if the Centauri are here.”
“Follow me,” was all Teuta said as she darted to the right, through a narrow alleyway, continuing on into someone’s backyard and hoisting herself over the backwall. From there, she entered another tight passageway and walked on, swiftly and silently, along a brick house, only to exit to one of the smaller city squares.

“There, Amira Azra is several minutes that way. Please book us two rooms, and rest if you like. I’m going to the guild now,” she spoke. Loki crossed his arms over his chest, nodding.
“Anything else, your Majesty?” he said, blinking repeatedly. She poked him in the chest a few times.
“Well, now that you’re asking, I’d love it if you fetched some proper food. Maybe leave it on the table in my room.” She looked at a non-existent wrist watch. “In, let’s say, an hour – I’d like to eat it warm. At least warm!”
“Or; and don’t mind me meddling with your schedule here, my beautiful little thief-“
“Do not call me like that-“
“my beautiful Miss Litentyv-“
“Lok-“
“My be-“
“Loki!” she said, tapping both of her palms on his chest. He was immovable as always. “Stop that, stop it, call me by my name!” She had a mad expression. With her tired eyes and the seriousness peering from inside them, he saw that she was… adamant about this. He cared none. This was an extension of her hurt.

 
“Just leave me alone for a fucking hour, alright? Can I have an hour in a day without you pestering me?”
He inhaled a sharp breath.
“I am pestering you?”
“Well, aren’t you? I think I’m being incredibly accommodating with suggesting the same hotel; and that is solely because I know you’d be insisting on it, and I am tired from that future discussion in advance; because there is no getting rid of you.”
Loki felt a pang of hurt. The teensiest pang inside his chest. He wanted to suggest not only the same hotel, but the same bed, in which he would, after a hearty meal, coddle his little human and tell her how beautiful she was and how much he enjoys her company. Loki was baffled that this was not obvious to her.
“You’re being unreasonable. Now, I’m sure you need to rest to refresh your fortitude and clarity of mind, so I’ll ignore all of this shouting, but let’s go eat something first.”
Teuta sighed, rubbing the root of her nose.
“I am not your pet human. You don’t get it, do you? This is not enjoyable for me, my god. This is a horrible, fucked up burden I was forced to endure by that insane witch. In order for me to put up with your incredible ego, I need rest and time away from you. Do you understand this? Is this making its way to that aristocratic mind of yours? Fuck off for an hour.”
Loki didn’t have this in mind when he envisioned her saying the words “my god” to him. The pang repeated, starting to create a very uncomfortable feeling of a tiny knot in his stomach. Absolutely, wholly despising the feeling of weakness and the underlying vulnerability, he tried to keep himself in control. Despite centuries of practicing, he couldn’t ever hide the sadness from his green eyes.

Teuta observed it, the glassiness of his eyeballs and the awful little lip twitch which was followed by a gulp. He looked like a hurt little boy for a second, before he cast his eyes to the floor. Her heart constricted for a moment, before she was mad at herself.
“It’s not a good idea to anger me, Teuta.”
“I’m simply being honest, Loki.”
“You’re being a bitch to me.”
Teuta couldn’t help it, she snorted a laugh. The rarely uttered simple insult, paired with this boyish hurt on him was absolutely hilarious – considering who he was and how elegantly he normally expressed himself. He frowned, cocking his head.
“Are you mocking me?!” His voice raised a bit. “Now you’re mocking me?!”
It should’ve scared her. The god could easily overpower her. She knew nothing of his real temper. He could’ve choked her with only his magic. But Teuta had a daunting pride, and an even more prominent need to constantly prove herself.
“And what if I was?” she said slowly, with a dip in her voice. “You’re mocking me the whole time. How do you like it now?”
“I’ve never once mocked you.”
“You’re full of yourself.”
He stepped closer to her, lowering his head. She pursed her lips and tightened her chin.
“This would be the time to apologise, Teuta. The clock is ticking.”
The edge of her mouth was raised in a smirk.
“Does the truth hurt, Loki? Is it rare for you to meet somebody who doesn’t like you?”
He laughed softly, and his expression finally melted into a more familiar one.
“And who’s a liar now, my little human?”
“I told you to stop calling me-“
“Never.”
Teuta was mad now. Being tired, hurt, embarrassed and now mocked by his haughty laughter, she couldn’t take it anymore. Pushing her claws out, she raised a hand to strike him. He caught her wrist and tried to turn her around.
Pure anger-induced adrenaline kicked in, and she started fighting him. Loki was amused for a few moments, until she managed to slap him. Loose strands of his hair swiped his face. He was offended, and as he tried twisting her around again, he managed to pull at her braid, hard. She yelled out an insult and continued trying to block his moves. Her lenses dragged all the way across her eyeballs to help her calculate the moves.
Teuta was determined to win this fight, but weary as she was, couldn’t get the better off him; each time her forearm was met by his steeled one, it hurt her. And the way he grabbed her thigh wasn’t pleasant also, as she winced and tried leaning that leg around him to kick him in the backs of his knees. Loki was unpleasantly surprised at her speed. Just as he predicted even back in prison, if she gained all of her implants, including the spinal ones, she’d be a very good fighter. So he upped the stakes and slapped her bum, very, very hard. After all, he couldn’t really hurt her. But she was making him extremely annoyed, as insolent as she was.
She yelled out as the slap resonated throughout her body and took to swiping the blunter back side of her claws against the front of his shoulder. That would surely cause tiny little cuts. Nothing serious, though; something in her prevented her from seriously hurting him. And that fucking slap across her bum was demeaning. So Teuta stepped back and lunged at him. This time, he stumbled back, making her laugh at finally moving him – and she tightened her legs around his waist, trying to pull his hair back so that she could punch him. Loki grunted and grabbed her chin to push her off himself, but she was like a spider, her wide cape making it difficult to grab hold of her. They were both panting, and yelling out, and pulling at each other frantically. Finally, Loki splayed a hand over her sternum to press her down, but his agile little spy used his long limbs to twist herself sideways so she could wrap a strong leg around his neck, knocking him off-balance. Bending back, then forth as he tried ripping her off himself, they fell down. Landing on her back, Teuta yelled out in pain and rage, and locked his head between her thighs, tightening them. Loki grunted and slapped at the tightened muscle, but she wasn’t giving up. Then he bit her, quite hard, and she whined.
Being busy with the ridiculous fight, they didn’t notice a group of colourful, cheery women of the night approaching them. Several laughed, and one whistled at them.
“Fuck off!” Teuta yelled out as her body trembled to try to keep him in this lock. Loki couldn’t turn his head around enough to see them.
“My, my, you’re both hot! Let us know if you need companions! Choking is paid extra!” a young, dark-haired beauty said, leaning over to Teuta, who just repeated her previous words. As they walked away chuckling, Teuta realised they were, in fact, in the middle of a town square; albeit a tiny, almost abandoned one, and were, in fact, stupidly fighting. Fake fighting. He obviously couldn’t hurt her, and she couldn’t bring herself to even slice through his milky skin. He tried mumbling something against her skin, before loosening his entire body. Feeling him relax and stop defying, she slumped down, opening her legs. He pushed himself away. She was laying on her back and breathing heavily.
Loki rubbed the side of his neck, glaring at her. That was not the headlock he desired from her.

After the rage subsided slightly, he was left with a feeling of resentment and hurt. She wanted to get away from him so much she was willing to hurt him.
Tightening his lips, he rose to his feet and started walking away.
She lifted her head off the ground when she heard his steps.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m fucking off,” he said, not turning around. Huffing, she jumped up and felt a pinch of pain on the back of her thigh. Hissing, she touched it. It was wet: her wound reopened and was bleeding. As she brought her hand in front of her face to look at the blood, Loki turned around, having heard her hiss in pain. He saw the red on her hand, and, in a split second, he appeared in front her, holding her wrist.
“Did I hurt you?” he said, his eyes worried. Teuta’s feelings of guilt were ramped up. She felt them in her heart, and, wanting to get away from that, she removed her hand from his.
“No. My wound reopened. I’ll go see a doctor.”
“I’m sorry-“
“It’s not your fault. Are you going to go rent the rooms?”
“Do you need help?”
“No, Loki.” She didn’t know whether it was possible for her to apologise. She thought her feelings should go away, simply like that, because he didn’t want her. It was clear this morning. So why this display of worry? He saw her expression, which didn’t help. Nodding to himself, he turned his sad gaze to the floor, before turning around again.
“Are you-“
“Yes,” was all he said as he straightened his perfect posture and walked away. Teuta exhaled a breath as he was sliding out of view, biting her lip and shaking her head. This was good, she thought. He’ll cease this game of his eventually. And then we’ll be actual partners.
Nodding, she pulled out her extra shirt from her backpack and wrapped it around her thigh, under her cape. There should be a doctor at the guild.

Hands in his pockets, Loki kicked pebbles out of his way while he walked to the hotel. Of course she would choose that dump – Amira Azra being suitable only for anonymous criminals. Angry, ungrateful, uncouth criminals like Teuta.
What Loki couldn’t understand was, why was the feeling of being scorned prevalent. He extended his affection, his care, and it was pushed away, thrown away. He really cared about her, and she just acted like an uncultured savage towards him.
Deciding to ignore this feeling and focus on things that could be under his control, he walked to the reception. A Krylorian woman sat there, her legs up on the desk, eating a snack and watching a small holographic television that laid in the corner. He approached, and cleared his throat. Twice.
“Excuse me?” he said, finally. She sighed and got up, simpering.
“Hi, welcome to the Amira Azra, my fair gentleman. How can I help you?”
He bit his tongue to avoid insulting her.
“What are the worst and the best rooms you have?”
“The worst one is the cheapest, here on the ground floor, the window directly to the back street. The best one is up there,” she pointed to the ceiling, “it’s a suite. View included. And a bath. There are two on the highest floor.”
“Good. I’ll have the lower room booked indefinitely under the name Litentyv, and the suite booked under the name Laufeyson.”
“First name?”
“Is it necessary?”
“Nope. First two nights are paid in advance.”
He didn’t take his eyes off of her as he materialised a pouch of units in his right hand. Her eyebrow lifted. He threw the pouch on the scraped reception desk and opened his palm, awaiting the keys. She handed both to him.
“Just the suite. There will be a woman coming later on to get the other key.”
“Fine with me. Enjoy your stay, my good sir.” She mumbled, sprawling herself back down on the chair, barely even looking at him. He shook his head dismissively and walked away to his room, to take a bath and rest.

Teuta relished the pain in her thigh, because it proved to be a worthy distraction to the feelings swirling inside of her. Guilt, hurt, embarrassment. Awful combination. The worst thing was, when he approached her again, she wanted him to give her one of his spine-breaking hugs and caress her back while she sniffed against his chest.
Wanting to get away from it all, Teuta felt a yearning to go higher and higher; and she did, climbing the side of the building, using protrusions and beams to hoist herself up on the rooftop. The slight twinge of the leg pain kept her focused. She could feel that wind up here, and the sun on her face. It almost went over that mountain, but there was still at least an hour of sunlight; there was time to do what needed to be done.
Quickly, like the wind, Teuta jumped from rooftop to rooftop, using all manners of decorative architectural elements as either a handle or a springboard to leap even further, even higher. Soon, she could see the familiar sienna-coloured rooftops with their flat surfaces appear in front of her, signalling the guild is nearer. At last, she jumped on the anonymous building with no seeming entrances low on the ground, appearing to the passerby as an abandoned warehouse.
That’s because it could only be entered from the rooftop. The makeshift doors were lined with elaborate steel carvings, and one had to figure out how to unlock it. Teuta knew this already, for she had been here at least ten times.
Tracing the patterns, she tried locating the jutting pin which needed to be pressed. From there, following the Fibonacci progression, pins sprang up, needing to be pushed back down in the expected order. When the task was done, the locking mechanism released a bit of air before the doors clicked loose. Teuta lifted the hatch and jumped inside, knowing the landing slide was near to the opening, and allowed one to land on their feet on the higher floor. There was an unknown woman leaning on the doorframe of that floor, smoking a pipe. She was fully dressed in black, her face hidden by a shawl. Nodding in greeting, Teuta dusted off her palms and walked on. The woman traced her movements with smart, large eyes.
Walking into the larger hallway, she was met by more shady characters, all of them boring, standing in a way that implied mystery and caution. Rolling her eyes, she ignored the crowd in the larger hall room and went on to the secretary, who sat at his desk, typing away. As always, Teuta was thoroughly ignored by the bureaucratic idiot, who kept repeating “just a minute”, before finally, after good five minutes of Teuta rapping her claws against the desk, looked at her with a bright smile, adjusting his glasses:
“Name and code, please?”
“Is there a doctor? Where can I find them?”
“Is this your first time here? Name and code please.”
“624UN. It’s not.”
“Name, please?”
“You don’t need it.”
The secretary smiled briefly, before nodding.
“Three doors down.” He said, pointing to his right. Now Teuta already started to limp, after overexerting her leg by climbing up, and reached the heavy, brass double doors. Silently pushing the handle down, she opened it and knocked quietly, peering inside. The doctor was stacking vials back in the cabinet.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is it an emergency?”
“Well, I have a bleeding wound, I’m afraid I’ll need it sewn and bandaged.”
“Oh, shucks.” He chuckled. “I was just about to go listen to the speaker.”
“There’s a speaker? Oh, right, I saw the crowd. Who is it?”
“Come in, let’s get this done.” He waved a hand for her to come closer. Teuta placed her backpack on the floor and took to sliding off her leggings. The shirt wrapped around her thigh was stained now, and needed washing. Which meant she had no clothes to change in, and she’d have to go get something.
“It’s a god no less, the god of thunder. He brings news from the realm.”
“Oh? Which pantheon?”
“Norse-“
“Thor? Thor, the god of thunder???” Teuta asked, her eyes wide. The doctor nodded and continued talking, peeling off the bandage Ura made for her.
“Ooh, good thing you came, girl, this definitely needs cleaning. Very good bandage though. Where did you get it?”
“From a very good doctor who wants to remain anonymous.”
The doctor smiled, as she laid on her stomach and propped her chin on her hands, listening. She could feel the doctor dousing the wound and wiping it gently with a clean gauze, before tightening the stitches.
“Very well, miss spy. Keep your secrets.”
He finished wrapping her wound in the traditional bandage around her thigh, assuring her it would hold throughout the no doubt strenuous activities his patients went through normally. Teuta thanked him and quickly dressed herself, before they both walked out to join the crowd at the main hall. Teuta pushed her way forward to take a good look at the large figure standing in front of everyone. The god was very, very bulky, much larger than his brother. Not much taller, though. Thor was tapping the guild manager on his back and laughing at something the man whispered in his ear. With a broad smile and a very big grin below his facial hair and gleaming blue eyes, he was truly the kind of person you like immediately upon setting eyes on him. A very big grey cape, not unlike Teuta’s, covered his heavy body, tightened by an elegant clasp on his right shoulder. His hair was expectedly long, dirty dark blonde, laying on his back, with a few strands removed from his face and clipped in the back.

A smaller framed girl was standing next to Teuta, sighing with appreciation when the god beamed at the crowd. Teuta smiled at her, raising an eyebrow. She smiled back and offered Teuta her bag of Zarg nuts. Being hungry as she was, she took a handful and chewed gratefully, surprised that she hadn’t even had to steal them. In the den of thieves, everything was up for grabs. So she had her backpack to the front, and laid her crossed forearms over it. The hall was quite large and dark brown, able to accommodate a crowd of at least fifty people, prepared for bidding. The slightly elevated podium in the same colour looked much like the ones at her university did, where the haughty professors yakked on and on. Thor didn’t hide behind it, and Teuta appreciated that immediately. Instead, he clapped his hands and stood in the middle of the stage, clearing his throat.

“Thieves and spies of the Nine Realms! Thank you for welcoming me, and of course, thank you to mister Rojas for accepting my invitation,” he pointed to the guild manager, who nodded his head appreciatively, “because I come with a message. I will not take much of your time, as I haven’t got much myself. I am on a mission by the All-Father of the Nine Realms.”
At this, there was a murmur throughout the crowd. Teuta looked around herself at the quiet grunts of disapproval by some of the members. Odin had, in his early years, subdued certain kingdoms quite cruelly, and loyalists and the nationalists shed the shackles of his rule, which was held under the title of “All-Father of the Nine Realms”, so this was, if anything, a poor choice of words from Thor.
“Quiet, please!” Rojas clapped his hands, glaring at the crowd. Thor bit his tongue, gulping.
“…by my father Odin, ruler of Asgard… he sent me on a mission to acquire as much information about Thanos as I possibly could. We are all aware of the threat he poses to all of the Nine- to all of the federations. You probably know the Centauri are trying to force an alliance with the Andromeda under their rule. I… I am aware of the fact some of you, uhh,” he fidgeted with his thick cape, his bulky fingers looking weird as he behaved like he had stage fright. Teuta frowned, slowly chewing a nut and starting to compare everything she saw to his brother: Loki was leaner. Loki was a better orator. Loki had the ability to charm his way into all situations. Although this honest display and the way Thor hadn’t hidden anything about himself was charming in its own right. Thor made one feel more relaxed.
“…of the fact that some of you were incarce- erm, some of you might owe something to the Centauri. No, no, I don’t know and don’t want to know who!” He raised his palms and shook his head. “What I’m trying to say is… I have a proposition from the All-Father.” Blinking a few times, he started fumbling with a pocket beneath his cape. Teuta now had a sympathetic expression. How was that person a god? He was like an overgrown child. It made her smile, and then she suddenly remembered Loki, with his intelligence, and all of his obviously meticulous care for how he sounded and how he expressed himself, to display haughtiness which had ground in the incredibly big brains he possessed. She snorted a loud laughter and immediately covered her mouth. Several people looked at her. Thor finally got out a piece of paper and opened it.
“I, Odin Borson, The All-Father of the… of, uh, Asgard,” Thor darted a look across the displeased crowd, “hereby propose a deal on behalf of Asgard. Faced with a threat of a new imminently threatening tyrant, we, the citizens of the Nine Realms, must act accordingly. Asgard shall no longer be an enclosed kingdom. For the time being, I propose a unification of efforts in cutting this threat at its root, th-thw-thwarting the menace of Titan before he reaches Laniakea. Every able-bodied creature of any origin, as long as it is sane of mind and good of heart, is invited to gather information of vital nature about the impending attack to Asgard. If the information is deemed important enough and helps us in our cause, we shall offer protection under the kingdom of Asgard, with clemency for the crimes hosted by the Centauri law-system.”

It wasn’t a murmur in the crowd anymore, Teuta felt being nudged and pushed by the creatures talking amongst themselves. Thor had to increase his voice, and the manager again shushed everyone.
“In return for our life-saving favour, a pardoned immigrant is to answer serving in the Asgardian army should the threat come to our doorstep.”
Teuta’s eyebrows were very high up. This was definitely not something she was expecting. Playing with a frayed thread of her cape and biting her lip, her mind’s eye roamed the Sanctuary II.
Teuta was one of the very, very, VERY rare creatures who set foot on the mothership and lived to tell the tale. What would Odin offer her for that knowledge?
Having protection of Asgard would undoubtedly keep her comfortable for quite some time. It would also mean revealing herself: that information out in the public of whatever realm she was in would put said realm in immediate danger. Thor was staring at the crowd as he folded the paper back and pushed it in his pocket.

“What trickery is this?!” somebody yelled out from the back.
“It is no trickery, my friend! The Trickster is currently not on Asgard! This is Odin’s clean decision.”
Thor laughed, placing a hand on his heart.
“How do we know Odin’s not lying?” somebody asked, carefully.
“I, Thor, god of thunder, give you my word on my eternal godship that this is the truth. We need this. My friends and my foes, all of our enmity has no place in the universe now. There is only doing what we need to do to survive. I don’t doubt many of you saw his allies testing their weapons of destruction in various locations. You do not want to go through a war. Trust me. One can barely recover from a true war, even if we survive it. I will be here for two days. I am staying at the Ayasofya. I will return to the guild tomorrow and dine here. Everyone is welcome to come talk to me. Afterwards, I’m travelling on, however, you are welcome to approach any Asgardian embassy in any of the cities across the star systems and offer your story. Rojas.” He turned to the manager, who nodded and allowed Thor to go sit behind the conference desk, before trying to form a queue of people who wanted to talk to the god. The girl next to Teuta pushed her way forward, using her smaller stature to sneak between everyone and get there first. Teuta stood in place, her arms crossed, observing the bustling around her.
She went back and around the queue to reach Rojas.
“Good day,” she said, and he let go of the shoulder of one of the members to look at her. Rojas didn’t seem to age much. In all of the time they’d known each other, he always looked like a forty-year-old man, with greying hair and a handsome, stern face. Indian in his descent, Andromedan born child of Earthly ancestry, he looked wise. His red shawl wrapped around his entire form, and curiously always scented with something akin to saffron, he bore his dark eyes into hers.
“You. 624UN.”
“Yes. Why are we not being offered jobs for bidding?”
He shook his head, confused.
“A god is here.”
“So what? I need a job. What can you offer me?”
He grabbed her arm and dragged her farther away from the queue.
“Teuta, we will not be hosting bids as long as there’s a god in here!”
“What?! Listen, Rojas, I need those units.”
“Why?”
“None of your business.”
He tutted at her, huffing.
“You got yourself locked up in Tungsten A, didn’t you? Idiot.”
“…and I need the units.”
“Teuta, you’re capable. Go find something out and seek protection from Asgard. He is not telling lies.” He tried grabbing her wrist again, but she slapped his hand away. This earned them a look from Thor. Teuta locked eyes with him for a moment, her mouth opened. He squinted at her, before his attention was pulled back by the member he was speaking to.
Teuta stared at the other members, shaking her head.
“I can’t. Not now. All of them will do it, right?”
“Clearly.” He waved a hand towards the queue.
“That should mean I get to choose jobs, doesn’t it?”
“I know you’re used to the backwater Shangri-La and Sakaarian dumps of guilds, but in here we have integrity! You can bid for a job.”
“So offer them!”
“One more day, and not a second earlier.” He waved his ringed forefinger in front of her nose. She sighed.
“Fine. Can you at least tell me if there’s anything good?”
He weighed his options, his lips twitching.
“Yes. And dangerous. I am not sure-“
“It’s okay, I have a partner now. A really good one.”
“You do? Hmm. Well, alright then. Sundown, tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Rojas.”
He huffed at her again and turned just in time to see two Xandarians inching forward, trying to skip queue, and immediately whooshed his shawl in their direction, stomping over there to prevent them. She stood there for few more seconds, before sliding her backpack to her back.
“Young lady!” Thor called throughout the room. Teuta stopped in her tracks and turned around to look at him. “You don’t have any crimes needing pardoning?”
“I am my own pardoner, my god.” She bowed her head slightly. “I will earn my own units.”
“Do you have anything against Asgard’s help?”
This made Teuta smirk at him and weigh her next words.
“Quite the opposite, my god. I believe I’ve had more than enough of it,” she said mysteriously, and darted through the queue and straight to the double doors. Thor rose on his feet, trying to see where she went. Frowning, he sat back down to write more names and schedule more meetings with the ambassadors.
Teuta laughed to herself as she easily fled the known hallways and back up through the ceiling hatch. Immediately running of to go find Loki, wanting to inform him that his brother was here, she suddenly had an idea which halted her in place. Loki clearly displayed jealousy and some sibling-directed-anger, quite childish, when talking about Thor. He would probably want to avoid him.
Teuta now stopped running and rather walked on to the hotel, weighing her options. Wouldn’t it be funny if she was to see the siblings meet? Would Loki be mad? Definitely.
Wanting to be smart about the situation, she took a turn between narrow buildings and on, to the Minor Bazaar, where she bought herself a steaming hot plate of bulgur and red lentil soup, followed by the traditional eggplant dish which was so good she moaned out loud and stomped her feet in enjoyment. She was happy Loki was not here to mock how she stuffed the food in her mouth, having eaten very little to nothing for way too long. Buying a box of various baklava, she walked on, finding exit and going straight to the Ayasofya hotel.
Teuta left a message for Thor on the reception. It said:
“Tomorrow night, Safa tavern, after eight”

Chuckling to herself, she put the box of sweet cakes in her bag and walked on, to find a clothing shop. Dirty as she was, and most likely stinking, she was not an ideal customer. So she at least redid her hair, putting in the clip to reach some semblance. She had to buy a change of clothes; Teuta figured Loki’s pocket universe could keep it safe. …if he stopped being mad at her. Ahh, yes, I almost forgot. Loki’s expression of a beautiful hurt boy sprang to her mind, forcing her to sigh with the returning guilt. Now that she’d eaten, and felt much, much better, Teuta realised that perhaps, maybe, she was being a bit of a bitch to him. Perhaps a fresh pistachio and chocolate baklava might make him feel better?

When she entered the shop, the women working there looked her up and down. Being used to various shady characters in this town, they knew better than to openly react. Instead, one of them approached her and politely asked if she needed help. Teuta was looking around herself and explaining the kind of simple shirts and trousers she needed, along with a good, heavy jumper, when she saw it: a dress on a mannequin. It was so simple and so elegant she quit talking to stare at it; thick straps extended to a lovely sweetheart low décolleté, and the bottom was slightly flowy, reaching mid-thighs. She waited for the sales lady to go fetch her shirts and walked over to the mannequin, touching the dress. It was black velvet. She caressed it and smiled to herself. When was the last time she wore something like that? It must be well over a year. Thinking on, about the evening and the dinner at the Safa tavern, she smiled, deciding to purchase it.
Making a quick work of trying the size on over her leggings, she slammed the small pile of clothes into a bag and actually paid for them. By gods, this was a feeling one could get used to.
She was quite sure the queen of Asgard would want her to look appropriate when conversing with her two sons. Laughing at this, she arrived at the Amira Azra. Walking over to the reception, she tapped the ankle of the receptionist who already dozed off, crumples of snacks over her jumper, the television blaring next to her. She jumped up, smacking her lips.
“Hi. I believe I have a room booked under the name… Teuta?”
“Litentyv?”
Teuta grinned.
“Yes.”
“There you go.” She handed Teuta the keys. Looking at the room number, which she knew was on the ground floor, she frowned for a second.
“Are you sure this is the right room? It was supposed to be booked by a tall man, black hair, elegant…?”
“Yes, name Laufeyson. He booked this room and the suite.” The receptionist yawned, pointing up at the ceiling. Teuta realised what he did and licked her lips, before having a hearty laugh. It was so petty, so perfectly petty and childish she now knew he was entirely pissed off at her.
“Ahh, no, that won’t do. May I exchange the room for the suite?”
“You can, but it’ll be extra. No money back.”
“Right, right, of course. If you give the ground floor room we paid for to anyone else, I’ll report you. Alright? The suite is also on him.”
“Whatever.”
The receptionist mumbled as she typed in another reservation, before giving Teuta the extra set of keys.
There were two more things Teuta needed today. A shower and some sleep. Entering the suite and looking around herself, she was satisfied with this accommodation, feeling like she could also get used to the Asgardian level of comfort. Ripping her stinky clothes off, she jumped in the shower and slowly scrubbed herself clean. Even the hotel shampoo smelt like heaven now, as her hair was finally completely clean. Taking time to rub her aching, but washed skin with the towel to massage it a bit, she pulled on her clean pair of tight grey trousers and her new black jumper, ruffling the wet hair, letting it dry out. She took everything out of her backpack and cleaned the insides. As usually, Teuta arranged the blades there on her bed, slowly. This was a ritual of hers; she needed to check in with herself before going to bed. The ritual comprised of taking every item she owned into her hands, looking at it for some time, being grateful for having it – as that was truly everything she owned. Physical parts of her freedom, elements of fleeing and fending for herself, items of her owned, earned life. Nothing else existed for Teuta.

…except that, it wasn’t all here. Some of the blades and smaller items were in Loki’s pocket. She sighed, feeling discomforted with this fact. But he kept them safe, didn’t he? Teuta nodded to herself. Yes. Some smaller parts of her owned life elements were safe with him. For now. …and only if she apologises to the god-child that is Loki. Feeling a pang of guilt still, but much, much more satisfied with how this day went and everything she managed to learn, Teuta got off the bed and took the box of sweet cakes, exiting hers and approaching Loki’s room, smiling at the fact this seemed to be a repeating thing, them being neighbours.
He opened the doors and was met with this tiny smile of her lips. Still obviously tired, but looking much more refreshed, he was immediately annoyed with the fact she obviously took time to tend to herself. He had expected her to storm to his room and make a ruckus about the reservation. He hoped she would do that. Alas, here she was, smelling like the artificial coconut in the hotel shampoo.

Chapter Text

“Teuta.”
“Hi.”
He was silent, crossing his arms over his chest and darting a look at the yellow cardboard box she was holding. She raised her eyebrows, expecting him to move so she could enter.
He had a pout on his face. Teuta thought it was the most adorable thing she’d seen in the longest time. Barely keeping herself from smiling, she spoke. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Loki…”
“Fine, you may enter if you wish,” he said and turned around, walking back inside, leaving the doors open. She closed them behind herself, walking to the table and placing the box down. He had his back to her, looking out the window. The god of drama even kept his posture perfectly straight. It was not clear how he managed to look disdainful from the back, but he managed it.
“I’ve been to the guild. I couldn’t get any jobs.”
“Why?” he spoke, turning around to look at her. “Are you that incapable?”
She placed her hand on her hip.
“No I’m fucking not. I couldn’t do it-“
“Why?”
“I am trying to explain. There were no bids today.”
“Couldn’t you talk to your leader?”
Teuta grinned.
“We have no leader. He is a manager. And yes I did, however, there was-“
“So you couldn’t ask him for a job?”
Now she gritted her teeth and inhaled a sharp breath.
“I didn’t come here to fight, Loki.”
“So why did you come here?”

Teuta gulped, fidgeting with the hem of her jumper.
“I came to apologise.”
“Sorry, what is that, I didn’t hear you?”
“I am sorry.”
“Could you speak louder, please? Enounce clearly, if you will, Teuta?”
He made a tiny circle in the air with his elegant fingers. Still gritting her teeth, now annoyed again, she took a deep breath and spoke loudly.
“I am sorry, Loki. You were right. I’ve been bit of a bitch to you today. I think I was, perhaps, really hungry, and I do not fare well with being hungry.”
He nodded, tapping his chin.

“What’s that?” He pointed to the box.
“Baklava. It’s a Turkish-“
“I obviously know what a baklava is, Teuta. Why did you bring it?”
She shrugged.
“I thought it might help with the apology.”
He raised his chin up, seeming arrogant, but she could see his eyes looked brighter already.
“I didn’t know what you would like, so I brought you my favourite,” she said, taking the box and lifting the lid, displaying four perfectly cut glazed slices. “Pistachio and chocolate.”
He walked over to her and took one between two long fingers, taking a small bite.
“They’re good.”
“Yes, I always have them when I come here.”
“Hmm.”
He said, chewing through the entire slice and licking his lips. Still unsure of his current emotional state, Teuta decided not to risk it and got up on her toes, planting a kiss on his cheek. He watched her warily for a moment, until he couldn’t help but slouch a little from his rigid position. Washed with an indescribably happy feeling because his cold scent filled her nostrils even for a moment, she smiled at him.
Loki was wary. A brooding soul like himself was always deeply hurt by even the smallest indecencies, so he still felt that tiny weight on his chest, but he couldn’t help it; this girl had the ability to affect his mood whenever she was this close to him. Still not trusting that feeling, he walked around her to pour himself a glass of wine.
“Want some?”
“Yes, please.”
“So what happened at the guild?”
“They had a speaker today, so there was no bidding. It’s ridiculous, some famous swindler who apparently made the guild rich, or some bullshit like that. Anyway, Rojas, the guild manager, told me he is staying here tomorrow as well, so we have to wait until he leaves. But I managed to pry out a detail: there is a high paying job, something dangerous, so I guess it’s a good idea to wait a bit.”
He handed her the glass as she spoke, and she sipped it, playing with the glass so she didn’t look at him while she was lying.
“Alright. We’ll wait. For a moment there I thought you ran away from me, and all the pestering.”
Teuta looked away.
“You’d find me eventually. It’s pointless. Anyway, I am beyond exhausted, and I need to sleep. Thank you for the wine.” She placed the empty glass down after finishing it, and turned to walk to the doors. “By the way, what did you do all day?”
“I slept. And had a bath. Then I read.”
“What did you read?”
“I finished the tome on the conquest of Mars.”
Teuta thought of Thor now, and how poorly he seemed to express himself; imagining Loki as a child with a book in his hands, and his bulky brother most likely running around. She smiled, looking at the floor.
“Tell me all about it tomorrow?”
Loki frowned, sincerely, confused at the change in her demeanour. Something was off about her. She was too calm. He didn’t like it.
“What will you do tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “something relaxing. I think I’ll sleep for a lot of time, first.”
He nodded. Teuta looked at him. He was so incredibly beautiful sometimes, especially relaxed like this, in a simple tunic and suede leggings, barefoot, with his wavy hair down. Cocking her head, she observed the stern lines on his face and the elegance of his wide shoulder, paired with those impossibly long limbs. Loki was busying himself opening the box and taking another slice. It made her happy.
“How do you like your room?” he asked, licking the sticky filling from his thumb, barely hiding a smirk. She chuckled.
“My suite is just wonderful, thank you for your help. Good night, Loki,” she replied, still chuckling and shaking her head at him, before opening the doors. He winked at her just as he licked a piece of pistachio off his lip. Teuta inhaled, feeling her clit twitch at the image, and quickly exited, lest her body forced her to stay and be teased furthermore.

It took a good five minutes for Teuta to throw her items from her bed back into her backpack and peel her clothes from herself, letting out a sigh of pure satisfaction as she felt the softness of the bed and the warmth of the cover, compared to the cold cave she had to sleep in last night. Though his embrace helped quite a lot, she thought, smiling, before being knocked out completely.

*

It had been well over half an hour of Teuta sitting on her bed, sipping coffee and staring at the boot she was holding in her hand; her own boot. It was a good piece of footwear: sturdy, hand-sewn dark brown leather, with tough, slightly worn-out sole. The crinkles and the bruises on the surface just added to the panache of it. It was cool. If there was anything she constantly cared about, though it’d be hard to get her to admit it, it was that she longed to exude the aura of being a well-established rogue. Hence, these boots.
Laces were fraying. She should replace them. Other than that, she wouldn’t change a thing about them for quite some time. Holding it up in front of her eyes, she could just about make out a blurry black blob on the armchair opposite of her. It was the velvet dress she’d recklessly bought yesterday. Darting eyes between her boot and the dress, she scoffed. And tutted. There was no way, there was absolutely no way she could pair those up. With or without the pantyhose, thigh-high socks, nothing. If the boots had been black, she might have done a leather-combo of some sort. But that would be childish, wouldn’t it? She was hardly that little rebel anymore. Besides, Loki would laugh.
Teuta threw the boot down. Goddamn it, why am I thinking about him? Who gives a shit what he’d think about anything? At this point, she was wondering whether she’d bought the girly dress to be girly in front of him. Biting her lip annoyedly, she frowned. Over a year without minding her actual looks did something to her. Suddenly, she saw the dead ends in her hair, felt pressured about the hairs growing on her legs, and, stretching her cheek, huffed at the blackheads resting in the crook of her nose.

Turning around, she grabbed the dress and stretched it over herself. Smirking, she confirmed it had been a marvellously good fit. Fuck it, I’m doing this. Because, why not entertain herself on this rare relaxed day? Any Centauri officers who would dare come near Byzantium would get robbed down to their feet. Without reinforcements, at least.
Now back in her snug hotel robe, she finished her coffee and decided she should clear her mind, so she pulled on her clean clothes and headed straight to the roof of the hotel. Opening the window, she perched on the sill and grabbed the upper ledge: Suites were right below the normally flat rooftops of all Byzantian architecture, so it would surely take no more than a few good jumps to reach it.

“What in the Nine are you doing?”
Loki’s voice made her flinch and grab the ledge harder to keep herself still.
“Gahh! You scared me!”
He was leaning on the railing of his balcony, clad in a silky green house robe, barely tied, displaying his sinewy torso.
“I’m going up there to stretch. I need it.”
“Clearly. And that is why you’re climbing the facade of the hotel, because how else would one reach a rooftop? Surely not via a short stairway and perfectly working set of doors?”
He waved a hand to accompany his retort.
“It’s faster,” she said, shrugging and hoisting a bare foot over the iron hook used to secure a window shade. Loki sighed and leant back on the railing shaking his head. She chuckled and continued her quite elegant jump, sinking her claws into the crumbling stone. They went in absolutely wonderfully; she was immensely grateful to the queen for providing her with tools of such quality.
“And now she’s destroying Andromedan heritage locations. Don’t you have manners?”
“No, I don’t. I’m a lowly human, remember?” She leaned over the edge, staring down at him and grinning.

Teuta refused to think about him. Instead, she started her workout: practicing breathing, and slowly easing into feeling every muscle on her body. Pacing herself, and concentrating on perfectly executing every position she sank into, Teuta allowed the scarce sun to dance on her skin, and soon, all she was aware of was the terracotta under her feet, the clear air, and the way the world seemed to follow a heartbeat, opening and closing waves of energy, making her simply a minuscule part of it. So she followed the rhythm, and adjusted her movements to the already established perfection of the beating ether. Finally, she laid down on her back and allowed the world to flow over her with the sensations: cold breeze, a beating of an insect’s wings somewhere around her calf, the grainy deposits under her back, quiet whooshing of blood throughout her body, firm awareness of the metal in her body, laughter coming from somewhere down on the street, the capillaries under her eyelids lit by the sunlight which was now cloud-free, it seemed. There was a scent in the air, not of just the air and the bread being baked somewhere nearby, but something else, something… And it was a sensation near her ear, where the echoes changed. Not entirely capable of echolocating things without the implants, she still felt a change in how the reverberations worked when met with an obstacle. Which wasn’t there a few seconds ago. And suddenly, there was a feeling inside her, something stretching her chest cage. Teuta let out a quiet sigh and licked her lips.
“I can hear you.”
“That is impossible.”
Loki’s voice came from very close to her ear.
“It is possible, you fool. Even without my implants. Why are you interrupting my meditation?”
Another sensation which made her frown: she was covered with sweat. Remembering his reaction of disgust, she opened her eyes and sat up, away from him.
“I was bored. To my defence, I had meant to leave you alone, and I did, but then I came up and saw you lying down. Now, I had an idea. Do you want to practice with me?”
“Practice what?”
“Fighting?”
Teuta smirked, getting up fully.
“Didn’t we do that yesterday and I won?”
“That’s because I went easy on you.”
She chuckled, placing her hands on her hips.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself. That wasn’t even half of what I can do.”
“So show me, loud mouth.”
“I just might, bluebell.”
Loki smiled, remembering that was what she’d called him when he was in his frost giant form, and got up. Teuta walked a few feet away and closed her hands in a prayer form, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes, before slowly assuming a monkey position from one of the martial arts she had been trained in.

“Humans first,” he said, elegantly bowing down. Counting her breaths, Teuta lunged forward at him, expecting exactly what he did – he blocked her attack, making her stumble back and used the momentum to try and bring her down. She swayed to the side and avoided him, making him chortle, and continued to walk around him. He followed her with his gaze.
It wasn’t a fight; it was workout of movements, it was a dance, where Teuta moved like water, fluidly connecting her movements into avoiding his attempts at grabbing her. Not once had she managed to touch him, though. Now panting, and shaking off the tension in her arms, she stood still for a moment. Sweat was dripping off her forehead. Her palms were wet, and in no position to be used properly, so she cartwheeled to dry them on the terracotta dirt; landing in a crouch, she tried kicking his leg tendons, but he darted the swing. Swaying her hand through the air, she managed to slice an inch of the longest strand of his hair. Teuta observed the tiny lock falling down to the ground and caught it, grinning. He kicked her foot away and dove, pinning her to the ground. Now she could see the barely perceptible blobs of his sweat on his browbone. It made her satisfied.
“Loot,” she said, displaying the strand between her clawed fingers.
“Indeed, my little spy.”
That husky voice made her nerves stand on end. Would it ever stop? No, something inside her replied.
“Ah. This was good, thank you. I definitely need a shower, I’m sweaty and probably reeking. Sorry,” she said, aware of herself in that horrid manner of discomfort she felt yesterday. He observed the change in her eyes and squinted, trying to determine the cause of it.
“A good sweat cleanses the soul,” was all he said as he inched even closer to her face. She turned her head away.
“Loki, come on… I really need to wash myself; I know it.”
“You will, what’s the hurry?”
“I know I smell badly.”
Now he frowned. Didn’t she know how many pheromones there were in sweat? The illustrious amount he could pick up in his Aesir form, let alone his Jotunn one, was tremendous. And he smelt it already, something citrusy, something sharp.
“If you do not enjoy the scent of one’s fresh sweat, you will not enjoy that person. You should know this by now, Teuta.”
Her eyebrows raised for a tiny, doubtful second.
“Exactly, I guess. So, you probably need me to shower.”
He cocked his head.
“What are you on about?”
“Loki…”
“Wait, you think you smell unpleasant to me?”
She repeated the movement with her eyes, widening them in a manner of point made.
“Why on dear Andromeda do you think that?”
“What is this bizarre game, now? You balked away from me yesterday. I am not an idiot.”
His eyes roamed her face as the memories spun quickly in his mind. Then he opened his lips, realising exactly what she meant. It would be entirely sweet, an entirely innocently sweet insecurity if there wasn’t for the physical pain of that encounter.
Instead of saying anything, he smirked quite evilly at her, and she had a hitch in her breath, knowing it couldn’t be good. Loki pinned her wrists down harder than before and leaned his head to her neck, licking the side of it. Teuta gasped, feeling the swirl of discomfort in her stomach widening, and tried to speak, but he just kept that magical tongue out, tracing her neckline and kissing the skin all the way to the hem of her shirt. It felt good, it felt too good, and Teuta held her breath.
“What… what are you doing?”
He chuckled.
“Giving you a shower, my sweet little thing.”
He scooted lower down and bit the inside of her upper arm, inching closer to the sleeve covering her armpit. Giving her a peck there, and making her yelp out and cringe, he released one wrist to push her shirt up. Teuta lifted her free arm and tried something, anything, fumbling with his scalp as he kissed her stomach, before reaching the fully soaked underside of her breasts and sucking it. She let out a half-moan as he bit the soft tissue and grunted.
“Stop,” she said, splaying a palm over his forehead and pushing his head away. He looked at her, licking his lips lewdly. She gulped.
“What are you doing, Loki?”
“Making a point which shouldn’t have had to be made, but here we are, Teuta. And just in case you are ever wondering, I’d lick your sweat, and I would quite enjoy lapping at every single drop of your wet.”
She looked away as he got off her, her face wildly red. Luckily, it had been so ever since she’d started working out and her blood pumping hot, so it was easier on her shaken confidence. He turned around and walked away slowly, not looking at her anymore.

Teuta pushed her shirt down over her stomach and pressed her face in both of her palms, scrunching her face hard. When the immediateness of being embarrassed waned, she removed her hands, realising she overlooked something: Wait. Then why the fuck did he react like that in the cave? I’m so fucking slow sometimes!
Shaking her head, she got up and walked to the ledge, going back to her room the same way she got up, although now her muscles trembled slightly. It’s from the workout, Teuta reasoned.

There was a pressure. Sometimes more perceptible, sometimes less: the pressure of knowing she wasn’t good enough for a god. For someone like him. She was a savage child, for gods’ sake: barely civilised during her teenage years, wild and full of underlying rage well into her adulthood. When Lamaria found her, she was skin and bones, constantly drunk, mucking up jobs that she took and living off of superficial pickpocketing she managed throughout the day. Frequent fights and the tolls they took on her body were almost too much. Lamaria watched her sleeping on the streets, after she was kicked out of the motel she trashed while intoxicated – because the owner had lewdly suggested another form of payment. She watched her ease through the crowd and sleaze out with heavier looking pockets. Observing the way she moved about, one evening the Krylorian, well into her mature age, traced the way Teuta climbed the back walls of the Persian Needle, one of the highest towers in Shangri-La. It was a monument, built by the humans in the early days of the federation, home to a museum, rooms of which extended almost to the top, but not quite: up there was an abandoned storage room, quite small, with a large window and a window sill. Teuta always unlocked that window to sit on the sill and observe the city lights below her. When Lamaria entered the room, Teuta was eating a sandwich and sighing. Lamaria talked to her as if she was a child, earning herself a barrage of insults from the young girl. For the next few days, Teuta wondered about why the woman seemed so calm and wise, being a leader of a group of criminals, and why she had offered her a job. Curiosity got the better of her, and, after a successful few deals, she was offered a room at Lamaria’s underground home. Those were some of the most peaceful days of her life, where she finally felt surrounded by people who cared for her. Over the years, she earned herself a reputation, having been an accomplished thief. And then she knew she needed to get away from them: she cared too much. And she couldn’t have been contained in a single place for too long. So she went freelancing, under Lamaria’s blessing, returning every now and then to check in on her friends; watching the woman grow old: with no implants and no operations, her body treated as a temple to the gods of her homeland, Lamaria aged naturally. It was graceful and full of wisdom Teuta knew couldn’t be achieved otherwise: the fleeting simple truth of life should only be uncovered close to death.
In any case, no matter the years passed and the experience acquired, no matter the disguises and the roles played, no matter the ways of manipulating learnt and the ways of displaying weaknesses unlearnt, Teuta still felt like that angry, hurt child, afraid and lashing out at everyone. It only meant that she probably didn’t have the elegance needed to loiter around a god, but she was damned sure she had had enough of subduing at this point: gritting her teeth for each and every time Loki managed to either physically or metaphorically get on top of her, she decided to finally stop acting like the prey, and start holding her ground.
Showering the much mentioned sweat off of her, and braiding her wet hair, Teuta exited the hotel and went straight to the Bazaar, where she found herself trying on a pair of block-heeled sandals. Smoothing her fingers over a pair of silky pantyhose, she smiled. The sales lady assured her it was an incredible fit. Dragging the bags from the stores, she got herself some food, before heading back to the hotel; she had to convince Loki to come with her to dinner, and hope that Thor would show up. With a full stomach, she weighed her decisions, not knowing whether this was a good idea. What was she thinking? A brothers’ reunion? Annoying Loki, tricking the trickster? She’d just acted on a pure impulse. Perhaps because Thor seemed to be endearingly simple. Smiling, she thought that was it.

Sneaking the bags into her room, she straightened her shirt and knocked on Loki’s doors, several times. There was no answer, and it was locked. Hmm. Where could he have gone? Taking a walk down to the reception, she left a message for him. Well, paid the receptionist who claimed to be forgetful, to deliver the message that she was waiting for him at Safa tavern at seven in the evening.
With a hint of doubt, she went about taking a relaxing bath and decorating herself.

Teuta draped her washed cape over herself. There were certain comforts she wasn’t ready to forego, and with the colder night air nipping at her freshly shaven legs draped in skimpy see-through silk, it provided a feeling of safety. She wasn’t doing this for the mission, she was simply enjoying herself, perhaps like she would if she was a mere woman with a normal life. The receptionist assured her Loki got the message. Slightly surprised that he hadn’t come knocking on her doors and asking for an explanation, she shrugged and took a stroll down the streets of Byzantium. Offers for potential sexual services were normal here, and she wasn’t even offended, just laughed and walked on.

Safa tavern was the endearingly nostalgic tavern, completely decorated to look like the Earthy middle-eastern tradition: hardwood tables and dark, sturdy chairs, curtains on windows that were yellowing from the smoke, unfinished stone wall. They had added a long wooden bar for all the single people and all the loners who wanted to drink alone. There was almost always somebody playing an instrument and making everybody sing along. Lutes, mandolins and guitars were leaning against the microphone stands by the larger windows. Immediately upon stepping inside, Teuta was washed with heat, air reeking of strong spirits and smoke, and she stopped for a second, inhaling the familiar, welcoming scent. With a smile, she entered, walking straight to the bar: there were no android barmen. Here, in Byzantium, taverns had humanoid workers – so the bartop was dotted with spilt drinks, peanut crumbles, and various stains and cuts. She caressed it with her hands, waiting for the elderly, round man with a funny long moustache to serve her. He swung a wiping cloth over his shoulder and skidded over to Teuta, with a wide smile which displayed his adorable, red round cheeks. She grinned.
“Let me guess,” he said with a lasting wink, “beautiful lady will have a heavy, heavy glass of whiskey?”
She laughed heartily.
“I would normally, you got me there, but tonight I need to be happy. Red wine, please. A smooth one,” she said, winking back. He did a funny little dance with his arms and with a flourish of his able hands, threw the bottle around himself, only to catch it on the other side. She had her chin in her palm, endeared by the show. He played on, making her reach for the glass and chuckle. She allowed him, and the old man was so happy he said the first drink was on the house. Teuta spun on her chair, sipping the wine and pulling a traditional cigarette out of her bag, having bought it on the way to the tavern. Ahh, what the hell, it’s a night of celebration, she reasoned.
Swinging her leg and tapping her fingers against the wood, she took a look at the clock. It was 18:57 and he still wasn’t here. What if he wasn’t going to show up? What if he had other plans? He was free as well, to rest and indulge in whatever he deemed necessary. Sighing, she ordered another glass and took to observing the various creatures having dinner.
Most of them humanoid, they were attracted to the image of the simplicity this sort of establishment provided. Some of them, rugged old women and scarred humans sat alone, staring into nothing and nibbling on a slice of ham. Some of the more extravagantly coloured multi-limbed spacelings poured glasses of equally coloured fluid down their openings, and some completely quiet couples sat touching each other under the table, barely eating, only trying to shush one another to not let anybody else know what was going on. The bar was exactly five meters long, enough for two cartwheels. The toilet was on the right, had a bulletproof door, and a window easily opened from both sides. The ceiling was high up and the lamps were very tightly jammed into it. They could be swung from… Teuta repeated all that she saw and knew about the place, because she never knew when the information might come in handy. What else? Oh, there was a door behind the bar, leading into the kitchen and from there, to the back alley which had a high wall. The entrance doors were hardwood, easy to knock down or shoot through. Stylish, Teuta thought, taking a look at the doors. The clock on the bar behind her tolled for seven in the evening – just as the elaborate bronze handle on the entrance was pushed downwards and the doors opened, allowing a very tall and incredibly handsome man inside. He had a long black hair reaching the small of his back, which he took care of, for the locks were gleaming. He was dressed in elegant black boots, a pair of light absorbing black dress pants, a silk emerald green shirt and a very tight black satin jacket. Teuta slouched, sighing very quietly. He will be the fucking death of me. She gulped as she watched his eyes scan the room shortly before landing on her. She raised her glass and smiled lightly at him. He was expressionless as he started walking towards her.

Loki spotted her. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it is not goddamn fair for this ridiculously serendipitous fucking universe to set me on this course of exactly twelve steps to her and then not let me uncross her legs, kiss those reddened lips and slide inside her.
He licked his lips when he was directly in front of her.
“You made it. And at exactly seven. Well, maybe a few microseconds late.”
“My time is perfect. That analogue clock is off. What is this place even, I have never been here?” he said, his eyes catching the wave of her hair, the red lipstick on her impossibly kissable lips, that goddamn plunge in her dress and the way she batted her eyelashes at him, almost, almost as if she was happy to see him. As if.
“Well, I love it. I figured your posh ass has never been here-“
“Why are we here?” He placed both hands on the bartop on each side of her, caging her in. Her eyebrow twitched, almost sarcastically.
“I wanted to buy you dinner. And a glass of wine. We have a day off, why not?”
He squinted suspiciously at her, making her chortle, which, in turn, had her breasts jiggle wonderfully, and he just had to look down and catch it, while grabbing her glass of wine and taking a sip.
“Is this a trap?”
She licked her lips now, still smiling at his disbelief. Moving her head, she planted a chaste little kiss on his right cheek.
“No. Let’s go find a table.”
Her hair tickled his cheek as she did that, squirming next to him and walking to a table. Am I missing something? Why is she calm? Why are we here? She was mad, then happy. What the fuck happened at that guild?  He turned around, looking at her legs as she walked, and letting out a tiny moan of appreciation. I don’t give a shit anymore. She can kill me if she wants. I’ve lived enough.
Downing her wine, he tapped the wooden bartop behind him. “A bottle of that wine, please,” he said, not even looking at the bartender.

Sitting down, he leant on the back on the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. His legs were, of course, widely opened. Sort of just about perfect for me to sit on him, uncross those long arms and wrap them around my waist. Teuta smiled, saying nothing until the wine arrived.
“Menu?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, taking it and scrolling through the pages. She adored the fact they had these old school menus. He was still silent, observing everything she was doing.

“Oh will you relax already?! Loki, come on!” she finally said, exasperated.
“Hmm.”
“Oh you know what, I don’t care, do what you will.” She waved a hand through the air, inviting the waiter.
“We’ll have the meze platter, the biggest one. I want everything,” she said, clasping her hands in adoration. The waiter grinned, nodding and winking at her. Loki caught the movement and squinted.
“Is the food good?”
“You will love it. And here’s the deal, my god, you have to eat it with your fingers, just like your very, very uncouth human. Me!” she said, cocking her head. He smiled, finally.
“You seem to have this perception of me which is entirely biased.”
“No I don’t. You’re the fancy type. You can’t help it, it’s your upbringing.”
“And what might you possibly know about my upbringing?”
Teuta kneaded her tongue on the inside of her cheek, before smirking like a true trickster figure.
“Let’s see… you sleep on the most expensive sheets. Probably silk. Probably emerald green. You have a large room, with… maybe double windows, overlooking something magnificent. Wall to wall of shelves filled with books. A study room the size of my entire dormitory back in school. A doting, beautiful mother for a parent. If you want to eat, it is brought freshly to you. If you desire to travel, a wave of magic and some flashy rainbows get you anywhere, along with all the money you might need.”
Loki smiled.
“Not a bad guess. A bit of mentalism, Teuta, anybody can do it.”
Teuta now closed her eyes, appearing to be lost in thought.
“You like to sculpt things. Or at least, you used to like it. Figurines. You wanted to be an artist when you were growing up.”
Loki’s eye twitched.
“Am I close, at least?” she said, grinning wickedly.
“Is that written somewhere, about me? Where did you learn that?”
“So, I am close.”
He sighed, annoyed by the fact he had seen too many books on his family printed in all corners of the universe. The fact that the prying eyes got that deep into the palace slightly angered him.
“I wanted to be a great many things when I grew up. Alas, I’m this,” he said, raising his glass and taking a sip. She frowned.
“Did… did I say something wrong? I’m sorry, I only wanted to make you laugh,” she said, placing a palm down on the table close to him.
“I’m afraid laughing comes hard these days. Years.”
“Poor baby,” she whispered to herself. He caught it and blinked several times.
“Poor baby? I am a god, Teuta. Don’t insult me.”
She tutted at him.
“Why are you moody today?”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are. You haven’t once called me your little human,” she said, shaking her head. He let out a laugh, taking a sip of wine.
“Ahh, was that a laugh? A teeny tiny one, but a laugh nonetheless. Let’s try that again. Want to hear a joke?”
He shrugged, folding a napkin to entertain himself.
“Why are there no high doorknobs on Asgard?”
“Why, pray tell?”
“Because of low-key,” she said and chuckled at herself, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Loki took a deep breath and sighed, looking up at the ceiling.
“Sweet Norns, give me strength.” He said, but she could see the corners of his lips twitching. Teuta could see his throat now. She wanted to take a lick.
“I will annoy you into laughter, eventually.”

The waiter arrived with two large platters of various finger food. Assortment of cheeses, dried meat, salted fish; paprika and eggplants and wonderful tiny dip cups filled with hummus, tomato paste and other dips she hadn’t tried yet. She clapped her hands, making the waiter laugh.
“Would the beautiful lady like a drink on the house?” he asked, winking at her excitement.
“Yes, the beautiful lady would absolutely adore it,” she said, beaming up at him. Loki huffed. The waiter only then looked at him.
“Oh, one for the boyfriend?”
“He’s no-“
“Yes, please. A spirit, if you will,” Loki cut her off.
Teuta raised an eyebrow at him.
“I don’t like him. He reminds me of my father,” Loki finished, looking at the waiter walking away.
“How so?”
“He would always have that same cocky expression and handsome wrinkles, never pay attention to me despite me obviously being the most attention seeking individual in the room; and when he sometimes would, it was to utter a polite, passionless, insinuating question meant to provoke an answer out of me, instead of asking it like a normal parent.”
“Ha. And you got that all out of a single look and a question by the waiter?”
“It’s just something which reminded me of Odin.”
“What is he like?” Teuta said, taking a triangular slice of cheese and picking up a stuffed pepper to nibble on it. Absent-mindedly, Loki leant forward, picking up an olive and observing it for a bit.
“He said he loved me. I don’t believe him. Odin… Odin is a very vain god. He has to be, there’s a weight of the world on his shoulders. Only someone with a good opinion of himself could carry it successfully. He is not evil, no, however… Some of the passion he has is reserved for Mother, and that tiny bit of fatherly pride – for my brother. You were wondering about my upbringing. If I was seen holding an olive with my two fingers,” he displayed it for Teuta, “they’d get spanked. If Odin noticed me reading books that were too dangerous for someone of my… pedigree, I’d get a days-long lesson in how to stave off the temptation. If I had lavishly ornate partywear, or was, gods forbid, appearing in an embellished suit for a military meeting, I’d get asked if I had any respect for Asgard, the home which took me fucking in, so generously. He was so generous, his generosity spanned three centuries of weekly repetitive reminder that I am to be lovingly grateful that I was not a fisherman starving on a cold Jotunheimr shore. So I best use a knife to hold down the fucking olive and pick it up with a goddamn fork, like the fortunate adoptee that I am,” he spoke, squashing the pitless green olive between his fingers.
Teuta leaned forward, taking the mushy mess from him and pushing it in her mouth. He was surprised, so surprised there was a shadow of a smile on his brooding face.
“So, a stuck-up piece of shit. Should’ve led with that.”
 Now it wasn’t a shadow anymore. Loki’s lips stretched fully, in a grin which Teuta found gloriously beautiful on him.
“You should start eating, I’ll finish this all by myself. You’ve no idea how much food I can swallow in ten minutes.”
“What do I start with?”
“The olives,” she said, picking one up and squashing it between her fingers, before offering it to him. He leant, plucking it out of her hand with his tongue.
“Good boy. Aged cheese with Ezme,” she said, taking the slice of cheese and scooping the thick red tomato sauce. He ate it out of her hand. The spicy food opened up his appetite suddenly, and he found himself picking up tiny various pieces offered before him and appreciating the taste. Teuta took a sip of wine, observing him, before joining in nibbling and gulping the delicious food. Taking a quick look at the clock, she noticed it was eight-fifteen. The doors of the tavern kept opening, but none of the newcomers were Loki’s brother. Soon, she concluded he wasn’t going to appear… but seeing her companion’s mood improving, and indeed, how impossibly sexy he was, she didn’t mind. The waiter brought them more spirits, and Teuta downed hers gratefully, enjoying the familiar rush of heat to her brain. The tavern was packed now, there were people walking around with drinks, a man playing a guitar with a crowd around him. She could barely see the bar.
“Ah well. Everyone has a fucked-up family history. Say what you will about Odin, at least he didn’t maul half the galaxy,” she said, waving her glass around.
“I’d wager he killed more creatures than your lunatic mother did.”
“Naah. Quick deaths, lovely slices, jabs, a gut or two hanging out. My mommy takes her time, it’s an art form, really. Your ancestors performed Blood Eagle on their enemies? She’d do it in half the time, with half the blades, lungs perfectly intact, and the victim family’s guts laid out in a nice pattern around him.” She finished with a flourish, nodding her head. Loki stared at her, holding back a snort of laughter.
“She’d keep those lungs, making a nice little frittata for Thanos.” Teuta kissed her fingers in delight. Loki couldn’t help it, he laughed loudly.
“Out of everything I’ve said, this makes you laugh, you maniac?” she said, grinning and shaking her head.
“I apologise, Teuta. It’s the separation from the horror of that reality in your speech that is funny.”
“Well then, her existence served at least this purpose.”
“Are… Have you witnessed… any of the…”
“Mhm. But please, I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Of course,” he said, caressing her palm over the table, before taking off his jacket, since it was getting hotter in the now full tavern.
Teuta sighed, looking at how fluidly his body seemed to move under the gleaming silk. That was the perfect evening: they’d eat, and drink, and laugh; and then he’d pull her to the edge of the bed and make love to her. She was wet. Since the moment he walked in.

“BROTHER!!!” There was a booming voice interrupting her fantasy, making her tremble. Thor pushed his way through the crowd and straight to Loki, who looked like a deer caught in headlights, halfway through folding the sleeves of his shirt. He shivered as well, being caught off-guard.

Chapter Text

“Brother of mine!” Thor yelled again, grabbing his shoulder and lifting him off the chair to give him a hug which looked to Teuta as if he was going to snap him like a twig. The difference in size was painfully obvious. For a few moments, the people around them stared at them, but decided it was a happy reunion, so they just continued dealing with their own evening.
Thor finally let go of him, and Loki slumped down in his chair.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed at the big brother.
“There was a message for me, I was supposed to meet someone, a stranger, here in this tav-“ Thor said, now turning his head to look at Teuta. Slowly, his eyes widened. He pointed at her.
“You, you are one of the thieves from the guild! I remember you. One of the rare ones who wasn’t in the queue!”

Loki looked at her in pure shock, before his lip trembled with anger.
“You did this. Fucking liar! I should’ve known there wasn’t a chance you’d want to be alone with me for an evening!” he said, grabbing his jacket and pushing Thor away, before turning to storm out.
“Loki!” Thor yelled after him. “Sit down!”
Teuta winced, seeing him this mad.
“He didn’t know?” Thor asked her, still surprised, and not knowing what to do.
“Sit, help yourself.” She motioned to the food before she jumped up and ran after her god.

He was speeding away, and she ran, clumsily, in her uncomfortable shoes.
“Loki, wait! Wait, please!” she yelled, finally catching up and grabbing his arm. He refused to turn around, so she circled him.
“Loki…”
“It was a trap, wasn’t it? You had zero intention of having a dinner with me. This was arranged with that oaf.”
“No, Thor had no knowledge. I did it. And… I thought he wouldn’t come, so… I was having a good time, I really was, it wasn’t…” She fumbled with her fingers, starting to feel the cold around her naked shoulders, since she hadn’t bothered taking her cape. “I loved having dinner with you, I’m not lyi-“
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you invite him?”
“He was… Gods, it’s cold this evening,” she said, rubbing her shoulders with both hands.
“I’m not giving you my jacket,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I didn’t know he was here, at the guild… That’s the reason I couldn’t get any jobs. He had an announcement, and my manager, Rojas, refuse to give me an assignment, making me wait. And then I had the idea of… Well, I’ve seen how you talk about him, it was obvious you two had a fight, and I wanted to make you talk to him, because stupid sibling fights are stupid!”
“You have no idea what our quarrel is.”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“Yes, it does. Teuta, there was a breach in the trus-“
“It doesn’t matter, you complete idiot!” she said, slapping both of her palms over his chest. “You have a brother! You have a mother! They love you, nothing else matters! You cannot even fathom what it means to be truly, truly alone in this universe, with no family to fight with! Stop being fucking selfish and go in there and talk to your brother.”
His eyes roamed her face. He huffed.
“What was his announcement?”
“Go in there and ask him,” she said, now shivering.
“Teuta, he… He treated me like I’m scum, like I’m a lowly idiot who…”
She slid her arms under his jacket and around his waist, plastering her body against his to warm herself. He stood, rigid, not knowing what to do.
“You betrayed me.”

She groaned quietly, kneading her cheek against his smooth shirt, before lifting her head to look at him.
“That’s overly dramatic, Loki.”
She got even closer and now kneaded her cheek against his.
“I really was having a good time,” she said softly, giving him a kiss on his nose. His eyelids fluttered close as she dragged her lips to his, barely touching them. It tickled.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” she whispered against his lips, before separating and giving him the most seductive expression, licking her full reddened lip, letting out a soft sigh. Loki’s nostrils flared for a second as he felt an oozing of painful warmth in his lower stomach.
“Can I make it up to you?” she asked, teasingly pulling the button on his shirt. He looked up at the night sky, sighing heavily. Why her little teasing was working was a conundrum to him. He was pissed off, and now, with a few eyelash bats and a touch of her lips, he found himself softening, like his attention was fraying. Like she was a lover who needed tending to, and was politely, like a good, wet girl, asking him for a bit of love.

Teuta used the obvious moment of weakness and leaned over, softly biting the side of his neck. He tasted so good, salty and musky and somehow cold, and it made her lick his skin, moaning.
Loki ran his hands down her back and below her thighs, to hoist her up and carry her to the side of a building, where he pinned her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around him and wanted to kiss him, but he grabbed her lips with his fingers and pulled the crimson tissue, rubbing her lipstick off. She darted her tongue out and licked his middle finger, making him let go and kiss her.
It wasn’t prickles anymore, she was already drenched and could feel the silk of her underwear glide against him when he moved.
“Make it up to me?” he said throatily, moving away when she wanted to resume the kiss. Smiling, she wiped her lips with the front and the back of her hand, knowing the stains there, and chortled.
“Was this a part of your training?” He squinted again, observing the heave of her breasts. She shook her head.
“Different specialisation. What, am I confusing you? You can’t tell whether I’m honest or trying to get something out of you?”
“Obviously.”
“Welcome to the club, bluebell.”
He chuckled, before leaning and kissing her forehead. There was only so much distinct, direct pressure of pure lust his poor cock could take. This was reaching that edge of pain. Even the little frown of her brows at his innocent kiss made him receive another pleasurable jolt followed by an acidic pinch. He let her down.

Straightening his shirt, he inhaled deeply and turned around to adjust his hair back into perfection.
“For the want of a better entertainment…” he whispered and went walking back to the tavern. She grinned and ran after him.
“How do I look?”
“Like you just sucked my cock. Lovely.”
He winked and opened the doors. Teuta gasped and ran to the outer window, adjusting her lenses to see in the dark and try to wipe the remaining colour away. Relatively satisfied, she walked back inside. Loki was again sitting with his arms across his chest, and Thor was stuffing his mouth with the cheese. She sat down next to Loki, who didn’t even look at her.
“What is your name, fair lady?”
“Teuta,” Loki replied in her stead. “And she is not a fair lady.”
“Pleased to meet you, Teuta.” He extended a hand and almost crushed hers with a firm handshake, grin on his handsome face. The first impression seemed to linger, like he was a very friendly giant. Quite beautiful for a giant, as well. She smiled at him.
“Yes, Loki, I am the fairest lady. Thank you, Thor. Do… can I call you Thor?”
“Of course, any friend of my brother is my friend. Now, how did you find him?”
“Thor, that is no-“

Teuta placed a hand on Loki’s shoulder, patting it.
“It is a long story. We’re tied by debt.”
“Arrearage, as it seems. One day it’s a debt, others, it’s pestering and we’re trying to run in the other direction,” he said, giving her a good, sturdy glare. She chuckled.
“As I said, it’s a long story. I saw you at the guild, and I know…. Not much, admittedly, but I know you two had some sort of a fight, so I decided to make a blind date,” she said, slouching and shyly nibbling on a bit of a toasted bread.
“He told you we had a fight?” Thor asked.
“Abasure. It was an abasure of the worst kind.”
“Loki… if that word means what I think it means… Don’t pretend you haven’t played any part in it.”
“A golden child of Asgard, always destined for the throne, without a shred of fucking empathy, dares to make me a part of his faux pas with Father?”
Thor’s nostrils flared. He pointed a finger at Loki.
“You have tricked me! Intentionally!”
Loki laughed, ominously.
“It would have been a trick if the person it was played upon had a modicum of intelligence to receive it. You, my dear brother,” he gritted his teeth, “do not fall into that category.”
Thor fisted his hands. Teuta’s eyebrow twitched upon seeing it. She grabbed a dip cup and shoved it in his face, saying, “You really ought to try their hummus, it is heavenly.”
Thor grabbed the cup and poured it in his mouth, still glaring at his brother, who had an elbow on the back rest of his chair and was smirking deviously. Thor swallowed, looking at Teuta.
“That is heavenly.”
She nodded. “Ah, yes, the food is authentically made, once they assured me they grew gardens-“
“And you had nothing to do with it? You haven’t, Odin forbid, sat down in your cell, thinking of ways in which to play me over?” Thor wasn’t even listening to her.
“I had.”
“So you’re admitting? You’re admitting you’re equally to blame?” The bigger god leaned forward.
“Of what?” Teuta asked. “What happened?”

Loki waved his hand elegantly.
“Be my guest. Tell her. I want to hear your version of it.”
Thor inhaled, looking at the floor for a few moments.
“Loki was banished from Asgard, due to being an evil idiot, that’s what!”
Loki nodded. “There we go, Teuta. I am sure now you understand everything.”
“Umm… Thor?” she asked.
“Why am I to explain anything to some human, stranger spy?” he said, looking her up and down. She looked to the floor, slightly embarrassed. He was right. She was nobody. Before she could see it, Loki grabbed Thor’s hand from above the food and twisted it painfully. She gasped as the larger god grasped Loki’s hair and banged his forehead against the table. There was murmur around her; everybody stared at them. A waiter came running, yelling at them to stop it, since this is a peaceful tavern and they will be thrown out. Teuta rose and placed her hands on the waiter’s shoulder, assuring him everything will be alright.
The gods let each other go. Teuta sat back down and shook her head.
“Tell me or don’t. I don’t care. But talk it out with each other,” she said, storming to the bathroom.

“Who is she to you?” Thor asked, rubbing his wrist. “Is she your lover?”
“It is none of your dirty business. And don’t you dare try to humiliate her.”
“She is too beautiful for you. And she is a human, no?”
“An Unseen, Thor. Already surpassing her span of life. Why are you changing the subject? Did you come here to admit you were wrong?”
“In what, Loki? In what? In defending you? In telling the truth? Lies do not fall easily from my tongue as they do from yours, liesmith. I cannot do it.”
“Does that make me less of a brother to you?” Loki was honest, hurt in his eyebrows. “You… you abandoned me.”
“I did not! I stayed to plead for your cas-“
“Plead?! A god does not plead, you dumb lump! Plead with whom? Odin?”
Teuta returned, sitting back down. They were silent for a few moments. She sighed, pouring herself a tiny bit of wine. Thor cleared his throat.

“My lady, I apologise. I meant no disrespect earlier. My emotions get the better of me whenever Loki is around-“
“Your emotions get the better of you always, because you have no self-control.”
“And you had it?!”
“Erm, if you don’t mind, I cannot be a part of a discussion if I don’t know what is going on. Thor, it is alright, I know I am only a human. I am at peace with that. Now, if you want me to leave, I am more than alright with tha-“
“No,” Loki said.
“…more than alright with that. But if I stay, talk to me. I want to see why Asgard’s beautiful sons are in a quarrel,” she said, smiling. Loki squinted at her; Thor smiled.
“You tell her, you love to talk about yourself,” the big brother added. Teuta laughed, nodding at him. Loki rolled his eyes.
“Fine. You want to know? Without embellishing it? Thor had the most brilliant idea to prove our worth to our father by going to Jotunheimr and quashing a teensy rebellion in one of the duchies. Without father’s knowledge, of course. Since he is too dumb to know how – shut up, Thor – he asked me to help him. And I did. I shared my knowledge and my ways, and we went to Jotunheimr, where… Where we talked to the loyalists. And I took what belonged to me, by my blood and my origins. When we got back, Father was mad, naturally, at me, not at his golden son, and decided to imprison me. Me, not the golden son, as I said. And then Thor pleaded for my case, so valiantly, making Father decide to banish me instead. There.”
“That’s not what happened. We both had that idea, Loki. You agreed with me. No, now you shut up. Teuta,” he paused, looking pleadingly at her, “I had no idea what would happen. I thought Father would be proud with us taking the initiative. He was furious. When we got to Jotunheimr, Loki had a speech prepared, stripping his clothes and showing them he was one of them, and they laughed at him. They told him he was nobody. And that they had a right to their own monarchy… in a gist. Loki was furious, and he went to talk with the village witch. Okay, Loki, I know, it’s a sorceress… But he stole the grimoire from her. And brought it back to Asgard. And that’s what got Father mad, because he’d barely brokered a peace with that unruly nation.”
“You sound like him.”
“In any case, I tried to talk with him, explain that Loki probably wished to know more about his ancestry, what with their nomadic ways and travelling and forms of living, and he said that Loki might just get what he wished for, and sent him away from Asgard to do just that.”
“Sent me away… what a lovely way of putting it, brother. He waved at me with a handkerchief.”
Teuta sighed, staring at them. They fell silent, waiting for her to say something. She poured herself more wine – now a full glass.

“That’s it?”
They were silent.
“So, you two had a brainless idea only little boys trying to please their father normally have, it blew up in your faces, so your father sent you away to ponder on your mistake, and he left Thor there to punish him into obedience, which he succeeded in?”
“It is a tad more complicated than that, Teuta,” Loki said sarcastically.
“Umm, no, it’s not, actually. It is a child’s play on a very broad canvas, the one of kingdoms. Honestly, I’m slightly disappointed. What had I expected? A true fight, where someone did something so wrong it was unforgivable? You two are little boys.”
Loki glared at her. She leant back on her chair, crossed one arm over her chest, rested the elbow of her other one on top of it, sipping her wine.

“Why didn’t you go with me?” Loki suddenly said, looking at his brother. “We were supposed to be brothers.”
“Why did you tell Father I wasn’t your brother, then?!”
“I was hurt that you ratted me out!”
“What was I supposed to do?! Huh?! What? He’d know it sooner or later; I thought that by being honest we would get a fair hearing.”
“And a fair hearing it was. You haven’t lost a single hair from your head.”
“Loki, I’m no fool. I know Mother gave you all that you needed for your trip.”
“A trip, is that what we’re going to call it now? Travelling?”
Thor was confused now, fisting his hands on the table, before relaxing them and frowning.
“Well, did you not travel? What were you doing?”
Loki blinked several times.
“Well, obviously. Thor, why are you here? In Byzantium?”

Thor leant back, sighing.
“He sent me on a mission. We’re tracking Thanos. I believe Father wants to nip this in the bud. He is… Loki, he is getting alarmingly powerful.”
“I know. I’ve seen the monk pigs in Edirne, I know you killed them.”
“What?” Teuta asked. “Thor was there?”
“It was obvious; a guard told me about a secret aid in the night. I killed the rest. Just as many, by the way,” Loki added, nodding to himself. Teuta cleared her throat, loudly. “Oh, she killed one as well.”
“You did?” Thor leant forward. “You are a mighty warrior like my Sif.” He bowed his head for a second.
“It got me in the thigh,” she said, getting up to turn around and raise her skirt to show the bandage over the healing wound. Just like a child, she needed to prove herself.
Loki caught Thor taking a good hard look at everywhere except for the bandage, and frowned.
“My lady, that is a serious wound. Do you need help with taking care of it? I can call for a doctor from the embassy-“
“She is taken care of,” Loki spoke, slapping Thor’s hand away when he reached for Teuta. She tried hiding a smile by sitting down and sipping on her wine. Thor’s eyebrow twitched when he looked at his brother, noticing just how different his brother seemed around this human woman. Could it be… could it be that Loki actually likes her? She is interesting, but… not his type.
He smiled to himself and looked away for a moment to cut that thought off.
“It’s not just Edirne. There is a genetically modified snake infestation on Xandar. The beasts reached the capital, there were a few casualties. Nova Prime took care of it… but it all adds up. He is testing his current progress. The worst one I’ve seen was some sort of nano-poison in the water on Sovereign.”
Now Loki raised his eyebrow, placing his glass down on the table.
“He dared go to Sovereign?”
Thor nodded. “Some of them got sick. Imagine that. A sick Sovereign, bed-ridden with illness.”
“Did…. How did they take care of it?”

“It took a while to get a hold of the cleaning technology. They’ve never needed it, so they had to get it from the Centauri. Well, the thing is, they’ve built it.”
“Nobody has the blueprints, it’s a registered non-export technology, how the fuck could they have built it?”
“Beats me. The word around the star system is that they’ve simply stolen it, which makes sense. But these stories have their own way of becoming weirder as time passes. There are reports that an animal of some sort was seen plundering the Medicine Moon of Alpha Centauri… a Midgardian animal. I don’t know, it’s hard to dig for truth, and it’s not a part of my mission anyway-“
Teuta began smiling when Thor mentioned it was stolen. She remembered Salthan saying Rocket was back on Sovereign, being obsessed with their technology. She laughed loudly, shaking her head. Loki looked at her.

“It’s him. The little weasel. I wonder what he asked for in return?”
Even Loki smiled a little now. Thor was confused.
“What, you know that thief?”
“We do. But, I cannot tell you anything about it.” She winked at Thor. He beamed a smile at her.
“Alright, my lady. I won’t pry. I’m not my brother.”
Teuta chuckled.
“But it is not Loki, right?”
She chuckled louder, and Thor sighed, mumbling you never know.
“You’re nice. I like you,” she said, endeared by his mannerisms. Now he offered a wholly new kind of smile to her, and Loki felt his lower left eyelid twitch in a way he thought long forgotten. Teuta waved the empty wine bottle and smiled, getting up to fetch another one.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Loki asked.
“About what?”
“You know what.”
“You’re not together, are you?”
“It’s none of your business. Everything concerning my partner is none of your business. Her mind and her body are none of your business.”

Thor observed his brother. It was quite clear, unusually clear for Loki to display insecurity in this manner. He’d watched his brother weasel his way into beds of betrothed foreign dignitaries; obfuscate and delude people who never even saw him coming. Once or twice, in their younger years, he also saw him take a true interest in someone, often displaying childlike fascination and a shred of honesty which baffled Thor, for it was very rare. He missed that Loki. And this entire bizarre evening, he’d watched him constantly lean on Teuta’s side, either holding the back of her chair, or touching her cape, or having his hands near hers on the table. Quite an unapologetic stare when she walked away from the table. To a stranger, it might have looked as if for a few fleeting moments, Loki was even afraid of her. Or her reaction. Now, Thor wasn’t as keen on reading as his brother was, but by gods, he was not stupid, or prone to wasting an opportunity to turn the tables. On joking, at least. Thor missed his brother.
“It doesn’t have to be my lasting business. I am here for another day, at the guild. Why not have someone familiar, a thief, talk me through the current affairs?”
“We have our own affairs to deal with. You should not use your position and your nobility to take up her time, for she needs it.”
“Why Loki, I did not know you became such a… caring person, helping others in need? Helping sexy little human spies with-“
“You have zero clue as to who she is-“
“Here it is. It’s such a good wine, and not even that expensive!” Teuta sat down. Thor stopped talking, licking his lips and smirking at Loki, who was expressionless for a few seconds.
“Do not worry about it, my lady, I am paying for everything.”
“No, you are not,” Loki cut off.
“It’s really okay, I have, unbelievably, enough money to-“ Teuta tried, her cheeks going red as she remembered she had their mother’s money with her.

“Brother. Teuta. Allow me, please.” Thor put a hand to his chest.
“In that case, I’ll have another bottle,” Loki said, abruptly getting up and taking a few long strides to the bar.
“How do you know my brother?”
“We met. In a place. Through people. And then we both needed a favour, and Gullveig helped us, indebting us to each other,” Teuta said, surprising herself for just blurting it out. But the wine was making her care less. Thor was shocked for a few seconds, before Loki returned.
“Well, if he ever gives you trouble, come find me. I never hide.”
“I might just take you up on that,” Teuta said, grinning at Loki, who swigged from his bottle, downing almost half of it. Her eyes widened. Thor laughed.
“Now that’s the Asgardian way! My little brother could never beat me!” Thor snatched the bottle from him and finished it. Teuta’s mouth remained open. Not even I… have… what the…
“You’ll vomit in two minutes!”
“No disrespect, fair lady, but we’re built differently. Does this amazing establishment have anything stronger?”
“You think I cannot finish a spirit?” Loki retorted, licking his lips. Thor had a daring look, getting up from his chair to order something stronger.
“Loki, what are you doing? You’ll get wasted!” Teuta leant over to him. His lips twitched with a tiny smile, and he moved even closer to her, slowly leaning his head to kiss her cheek, before sliding the tip of his nose to the side of her neck and inhaling. She could hear Thor laughing loudly at the bar, talking to some of the people there.
“What are you doing?” she asked quietly, feeling the slightly forgotten tension rising again in her belly. He was still silent, and now she felt his hand on her knee, cupping it, while he was still tracing his nose on her skin. Black locks tickled her chin.
Hearing his brother return, Loki let go of her and leant back on his chair, smiling. Almost innocently.
“Mead,” Thor said, slamming the bottle down on the table.
“Why were you at the guild?” His brother asked.
“Odin decreed a pardoning for every thief and spy belonging to a guild if they uncover something useful about Thanos.”
“What the fuck?” Loki leant forward, honestly surprised. “What has gotten into the old fart?”
“Thanos brings war closer to us each day,” Teuta spoke, circling the rim of her glass with her fingertip. “It’s imminent.” She smiled sadly, looking away.

Loki leant over her, caressing her cheek with his palm, very gently. “As I’ve said, tyrants will never prevail.”

She nodded. Thor’s eyes widened now. Loki is in love. Holy shit. My little brother is in love.
“Loki is right. Thanos won’t succeed.”
He said, pouring mead into cups for himself and his brother, before lifting his own:
“To his early demise.”
Loki’s eyes roamed Thor’s face for a few moments, as if he had a hard time letting go of an emotion. With a teeny smile, he nodded and downed his cup. Laughing ominously, he slowly poured another one.
A smile of endearment on Teuta’s eyes slowly washed out after the third cup. She could barely watch it, so she got up and ordered some mineral water for herself, as if drinking it would make them get drunk less quickly. Leaning against the bar, she observed Loki. This could’ve been him getting slowly drunk, because the otherwise measured movements became flinging of hands, crossing and uncrossing of his long legs, throwing his hair back with laughing. Laughing. His brother was making him laugh with something. She smiled, sipping on her water. And that was very unlike her, but she felt no need to get hammered – not tonight, anyway. In fact, she took her water and went to the toilet to wash her face, and rub her neck, to help her sober up this tiny edge she felt. Breathing deeply, she commended herself like Lamaria would commend her, smiled, and slowly returned to the shared table.
Only, it wasn’t just the two brothers there, but three stranger women, one of them sitting on her chair. Her cape was flung over another chair which sat next to Thor. Frowning, she stood next to the girl sitting in her spot. She had her hand on Loki’s shoulder, who was telling something which must have been out-of-worldly funny, because she was screaming with laughter.
“Excuse me? That’s my seat.”
“Oh, sorry, you don’t mind, do you? I’ve brought another chair and put your cape there.”
Teuta’s eyebrow raised, and she looked at Loki, who had just finished drinking and was licking his lips with a smirk directed at Teuta.

You see, Loki had thought it a good idea to allow these girls to cosset him and Thor with attention, if only just to see how his little human would react. Teuta smiled, patting the girl’s shoulder and went around to take the free chair next to Thor.
“He-hey Teuta! Everybody, this is Teuta!” he said, slamming a hand on her back. What should’ve been a friendly pat seemed a block of stone flying into her poor bones. Immediately apologising, Thor smoothed his palm down her back.
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” she said, caressing his face, making sure the gesture was slow enough to be picked up by everyone around. Teuta hadn’t listened to their names when they introduced themselves, keeping a light conversation going with Thor and another girl… which she hadn’t focused on. What troubled her was the clench in her full stomach and a buzzing bee of a thought in her sober mind. It was jealousy, no two ways about it. But why? They weren’t an item. They weren’t anything.
Teuta hated herself, hated how she already missed his lavish attention, missed how he constantly nagged her, even if it was just a few hours without it. But what she hated the most was that girl’s hand, which somehow found a way from his shoulder to his thigh, where it decidedly remained for full four and a half minutes.

“Teuta, thank you. Thank you for bringing my brother to me,” Thor suddenly said, holding both of her shoulders. She smiled at him, before giving him a hug. “Why aren’t you drinking?”
“I… I don’t know. I felt like I needed to sober up.”
“Nonsense, dear girl, here, have some mead!” he said, pouring her a full cup. Teuta took another look at the scene across from her, at the girl who was desperately trying to seduce her partner, and mouthed fuck it, downing her cup. It was strong, and she wasn’t sure if she loved it or hated it.
“Do you like it?”
She heard Loki’s voice. Looking straight at him, she shook her head as if she hadn’t heard the question. Leaning forward, he followed her lead, and asked it again. She took his face into both of her hands and placed her lips on his ear.
“I love it,” she whispered against the outer shell of his ear. Not expecting it, Loki felt his skin prickle at the sensation. She then kissed his cheek and leant back to her chair.

He was drunk. A good six out of ten. He hadn’t been this drunk in… a long time. Always competing with Thor, who always won (which never stopped Loki), he forgot just how thrilling a rush of this velocity felt. So much so that he almost momentarily let go of the uncertainty of being around Teuta: the one where he never knew where he stood with her, or what is was thinking. Yes, she wanted him, he could feel it, but the care to make sure she was safe and openly embraced everything he is was always there. And at the tiny, charged moments where she let her walls down, he felt lost – like a boy who didn’t know what to do. And if, sweet upper heavens, she actually openly teased him, he waded through his confusion and excitement like a stuttering mess. …on the inside. On the outside, a squint or a lip twitch was the only sign there was something happening.
Loki hadn’t felt true, honest, innocent excitement at the prospect of an intimate relationship with a creature in a very long time. So the entire thing felt even fresher: like he was awakened from an awful half-sleep one has while ridden with illness; healthy, alive, happy.
Holy fucking Asgard. That’s how she makes me feel. Upon the realisation, Loki felt giddy, and found himself trying to celebrate the discovery by drinking more mead, the go-to of his ancestors.
“What?” He could see her saying something, but he was lost in his own thoughts, his eyes roaming her face constantly, as if he had to memorise every line there.
It wasn’t making Teuta uncomfortable, only endeared. His hair started getting dishevelled lightly, the silk on his shoulder sliding about as he tried positioning himself, constantly moving and fiddling with something.
“I said, you’re drunk, Loki.”
“No, this is not drunk. You still haven’t seen me drunk.”
“I’m pretty fucking sure you’re-“
“Hey, you, Loki, did you want to go somewhere where we can talk?” The girl next to him pulled him closer so he could hear her. Teuta inhaled and leant back, busying herself with trying to cut into the conversation Thor had with his own new drinking buddies. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Loki chuckling and cocking his head at the girl, and it was obviously not the gesture of somebody refusing an invite to fucking. She clenched her cup, feeling her claws strain her skin, but retained the relaxed smile. After all, what right had she to prevent him from having a good time? They were probably going to go off on a dangerous mission after tomorrow. In the spirit of bettering herself, she might try to be above it, letting go. And letting god.

Thor shook the empty bottle, and Teuta sighed quietly, before yelling out that she’d get another one. Getting up, she took a look at Loki and carelessly hovered above him, leaning down to scoop his hair off his shoulder and inhale the scent below his ear. Coldness, darkened pine trees in the night, rising heat of his drunken flush, the pulling invite of the desire to intertwine her naked body around his and drown in that scent. He looked at her.
“I had to, before you go. Have a good time,” she said, with clear sadness she could not have hidden, and walked off to the bar, waving to the endearing bartender for another bottle. There was an older gentleman next to her, now sliding closer to extend his arm and try to introduce himself. She smiled at him, before being startled by a pair of arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her closer against a hard body. Loki nuzzled his face into her cheek and pressed his lips against her skin. She saw the man’s eyes widened for a second, before he retreated back to his previous position, nodding apologetically at her, seeing that she was already taken. But was she?
“Loki?”
“Mhm?” His voice vibrated through her. She nodded at the bartender who placed the mead in front of her.

“What are you doing? I thought you were leaving? Hey…” she said, trying to squirm out, seeing that he hadn’t moved an inch, only kept slowly caressing the velvet of her dress; now over her hips.
“My beautiful little human…” he whispered, more to himself, and planted a kiss on the edge of her lips. Drunk as she was at this point, having gone over her sobering edge back into the pit of letting go of inhibitions, she felt as if a pot of honey was poured over her, with his desire edging down her body right into the fire of her womb.
“Loki… Answer me.”
“You think I would leave you?” he said, allowing her only to turn to her side, where her hip still dug into his crotch, his arms around her waist, wonderfully cupping the polite few inches below the underside of her breast. He allowed his dry lower lip to skid over her full ones when she turned her head to look at him, fully lost to the closeness of her.

“I…,” she tried ignoring the invite for a kiss. “You like her, you should… we leave tomorrow, and… it’s okay, I won’t be a bitch about it and…” She fell silent when she saw his smirk. A drunken, lowered-eyelids-and-even-a-hint-of-a-blush smirk, but a proper trickster smirk nonetheless. She swore she could feel a tightening in his crotch now. It had the effect of searing hot poker inside her, allowing the heat of arousal to flush her wholly, and she knew her cheeks were probably quite red now. He licked his lips, satisfied, smug, and kissed her temple.
It angered her. Must he always try to reduce her to this? This frustration was making her mad, mad, and the alcohol hadn’t allowed any proper denial and made-up reasoning in this messed up spot they were in, so Teuta pulled his face down and bit his lip, hard. He winced, hissing when she let him go. Allowing his head to fall back, he inhaled deeply, feeling unrestrained lust coursing through him. Gritting his teeth (Teuta would not be able, if she had even wanted to, to think of a hotter image of anybody else doing anything else right now), he looked at her.

“I’m not sure you’re making me hard or soft right now, Teuta. Bite me again.”
She pulled his head down again, now kissing his incredible jawline extremely gently.
“You can’t order me around. You can only beg. Beg nicely, my God.”
She uttered the words with the full onset of a prayer in her mind. She could feel his sharp shiver at that. And his hardness now clearly digging into her hip. When he softly slid his head to try to kiss her, she moved her head. Taking the bottle into her hands, she licked her lips and moved away from him, trying to steady her very, very shaking legs into walking a straight line to the table.