Fic: Worlds of Chaos (Asgard) Chapter 14, complete

[bookishwench]

For previous chapters, see here

Loki did not know how long he fell. Darkness and light, time, distance, all of it stopped having any meaning at all long before his descent reached its end. He was unsure how he had survived when he found himself in the desolate landscape of another world, one of which he had no knowledge. It was quiet beyond the limits of mortal sanity, but he lay prone and motionless on the barren rock that floated through space and stared outward.

Stars in unfamiliar patterns moved slowly across the sky in his view, and by slow degrees awareness of his body came back to him. It was cold here, but that was no matter. The cold and he were intimately acquainted. His bones ached, though it appeared none were broken. The mystery of his survival buzzed around his brain like a pesky gnat. By any basic laws of the universe, he should be dead, but the bleak fact remained that he was definitely alive.

Gingerly, he moved the fingers of his hand and found that the muscles responded correctly. The same was true of toes, feet, arms, legs, ribs. A mental checklist of different possible injuries ran through his mind, but each returned negative. He wondered if Odin had slowed his fall, cushioned his landing, but he was equally certain the answer was no. He had survived, and there was no clear reason how. His dear brother and father would be most disappointed, of that he was certain. Mother, though… that was another matter.

Standing took a good deal more mental strength than physical. The last weeks had been stupid, and he knew it. He had not merely burned his bridges; he had obliterated them to the last atom. A wave of nausea crept through him, a sickening sense of being alone forever, and he shuddered, dropping back to his knees. As his breath became gasps, he asked himself where he belonged, where he could go. Of all the thousands of worlds that spread before him, the seemingly endless possibilities, his heart whispered only one option, and he spoke it quietly as he disappeared.

“Home.”

Loki remained invisible as he found himself standing on the shattered rainbow road to Asgard. He did not know how he knew it, but Heimdall was blind to him. That should not have been possible, but a great many impossible things had happened to him recently. There was no one here but himself. Tired, unwilling to use additional magic for fear his power to cloak himself might fail him, he began to walk back towards the palace. How long had he been gone? Weeks, months? Could centuries have wheeled past as he lay in the other nameless world? And yet all seemed unchanged, even to the cluttered rubble of their battle. That suggested it had not been so long.

He was still distant from the castle when he began to see signs of festivities. The lights in the main hall were already lit despite the daylight, and the flames danced merrily in the breeze. Banners unfurled from towers, brightly colored, snapping in the wind. As he came closer, he could see the good citizens of Asgard dressed in their finest, a veritable rainbow of silks and velvets and rarer fabrics from far flung places, all chattering amiably, downing mead in great flagons, laughing, toasting the victors. A victory feast. He had attended enough of them to know the signs, but was it possible? Yes. They were celebrating Thor’s victory over him.

His brother and his friends were toasting his apparent death.

He stood still and silent, watching the Warriors Three drink more than he thought possible. There were moments when he thought Thor’s face showed signs of pain, but a quick look inside his thoughts showed he was thinking of the mortal Jane and his enforced separation from her. Mother was not there, having made her requisite appearance and then retiring to her rooms. He considered going there, but the possibility he would find her disappointed in his return made him physically shudder. He would not have been able to bear it.

Loki walked away, not caring where his feet took him. Had what he had done been so terrible? How was it different from the many times Thor had set out to conquer a world for no reason other than sheer boredom or a desire for great deeds? He had always been different, and time had proven he was more different than even he himself had suspected, but to feast over his fall? Had he not at least been the son of the king?

No, he told himself. No, he had not, at least not this one. Even that was a lie.

Though his steps took him away from the revels, his mind searched out the faces of each person he had seen in memory, and he realized with a start that one was missing.

It was a thin hope, thin as vapor, but even vapor is something. He began to walk with purpose, along the flower-lined paths of the gardens and out further, past meadows that rolled fresh and green over hills dotted with wildflowers and butterflies and gem-bright birds. He came to the deeper green of the woods that marked what passed for wilderness on Asgard, little-used paths that bore few traces of passage—few, but not none. His heart quickened at the shape of footfalls in the moss, following them though he already knew the way. He had trod this path so many times as a child and later, alone most often, seeking the solace of the green beauty of the world here, but sometimes in the company of another.

The density of the trees grew less, became space apart, glints of sunlight appearing through the leaves as his pace became faster, then running. Had he been visible, he would have been a blur, but though the lowest branches trembled in his wake, anyone would have been forgiven for thinking it was the wind that stirred them.

The forest stopped, ending in a gentle slope of grass that led down to a lake of perfectly clear water, ringed round about with trees, the mountains of Asgard rising above them like silver and white sentinels in the distance. The gentle breeze of the forest was stronger here, causing small waves tipped in white that sparkled in the sun. This had been his favorite place, utterly beyond the reach of his brother’s imagination, a spot that was his alone until he had shared it with one other.

He heard her before he saw her, and the sound cut through him. Never had he heard the Lady Sif cry, not even as a child. The taunting of every male in their world, mockery, incessant questioning of her worthiness, practice battles in which the others marked her as a target more than any other, leaving her bruised or bleeding, none of it could make her cry. A warrior does not weep at wounds or pain, or so she had endlessly told him, but at the loss of a comrade, there is no shame in tears.

She lay at full length against ground, armor biting into her as her hands gripped the grass beneath her fingertips, disheveled and completely unguarded. Unlike the polite tears one might see in public over some distant tragedy, Sif all but screamed her grief. Her fingers clawed into the dirt, raking through it while her body contorted in agony. The gasping sobs shook her as her mouth opened wide in an ugly, constant flow of broken sounds.

He looked at the image of her for only one moment and found not comfort in the proof of someone’s true grief, but horror over her pain. Dropping his magic, he became visible at once and ran towards her, stooping next to her on the ground and gently touching her shoulder.

“My lady?” he said softly.

She stilled at once, stunned into a moment of shock, before she slowly turned her head to see him next to her.

“Loki?” she said, sounding as though she were questioning her own sanity.

He nodded, letting himself smile, then moved his hand to her face.

“I did not think to find you—“

He wasn’t able to finish the sentence as he found himself on the receiving end of truly spectacular head butt.

“What are doing here alive!” she yelled at him as he reeled backwards from the blow. She was on her feet almost at once, and he barely had time to notice she had her sword in her hand before she drew it back to smite him. “I should kill you for this!”

Loki quickly blinked out of existence and popped back into being again about twenty feet from her.

“Sif, I never intended to—“

She charged him again with a war cry that probably would have made Thor need to change his armor, and he barely escaped again.

“Hold still, damn you, so I can murder you!” she screamed.

“You’re not really providing me with much incentive to stay still,” Loki said, quickly dissolving again and reappearing nearer the lake’s edge.

“You coward! You son of pigs! You filthy, stinking, rancid pustule on the backside of a troll!” she yelled, tackling him as he was one moment shy of disappearing once more and knocking them both into the water.

“Sif, calm down!” he shouted in between her throttling him in the shallows. “You’re going to drown both of us, and I’d rather not be dead!”

“Don’t you ever die on me again!” she shouted back, then grabbed him fiercely by his soaking clothes and kissed him like it was another mode of combat.

Loki’s brain, which normally was working in at least fifteen different directions at once, ground to an immediately halt and refused to process any information at all for several very long seconds. When it began to work again, it was through sputtered individual words in his head, words like Sif, mouth, water, hot, cold, ow, Sif, moving, ow, lips, teeth, hand, hair, skin, want, want, ow, lips, tongue, want, ow, tongue, move, knee, now, dress, off, mouth, rip, ow, please, yes, more.

Normally he could be much more eloquent; however, the eloquence usually consisted of lies, and what was pouring through every synapse in his brain was overwhelming truth. He wasn’t quite sure how to process it.

Sif paused in their newest battle, gasping on the edge of the water, with each ragged inhalation taking his lower lip between her own. His brain finally caught up to the situation. She was straddling him, and a flippant quip that if this was how she intended to murder him, he’d be quite happy to die this way, but his tongue stopped as he realized the droplets on her face were not only from the lake. She was crying again, but a smile so joyous was on her face that he doubted he could possibly be the one to bring it there, and he touched her cheek as though now he was the one who was unsure if she were real.

“I never thought I would see you again, my prince,” she said, and a shadow crossed her face as though she too were only now beginning to realize exactly what she’d done. To his horror, she started to back away, and a light pink quickly stained her cheeks. “I apologize. I was very surprised. If you like, I’ll just… go somewhere else.”

“Go where?” he said, grabbing her hand before she had managed to get to her feet.

“Anywhere. I know this is where you go when you need to be alone, and I’m probably annoying you, among other things,” she said.

“Do you seriously think I would rather sit here and brood alone than continue with what we were doing?” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I thought I should give you a chance to refuse me. I just bested you in a fight then began to accost you, so honestly I don’t know,” she said.

“Accost me?” he said. “Let me make this quite clear. Please continue to accost me.”

A soft smile came to her face, and she lay next to him again on her side as he turned to face her. He had lost worlds, his brother, his father, his friends, his crown. As he gently ran his hand over her cheek, along the column of her throat, and down to rest over her heart, he knew that if he could have her, the rest of it didn’t matter one whit.

For centuries he had tricked, seduced, debauched the innocent, lied, and tempted, but never before that day had Loki made love. Whatever passed between them afterwards, whatever twisted roads he might tread again, for now, in this place, with Sif at long last in his arms against the lush green of the world, he was home.