Fic: Hearts and Lies (Frostiron) 11/13

[bookishwench]

More than three weeks passed without Thor returning to Asgard. The mission to Alfheim had closed surprisingly successfully, and Hogun and Volstagg, who had attended the meetings with him, returned with positive reports over new trade agreements. Odin actually smiled at the results, looking a good few centuries younger. But Thor was not with them when the Bifrost brought them home.

“Your son offers his apologies, but he has other business to attend to before he will be back,” Hogun said to the king and queen.

Odin accepted the excuse without question, but Frigga seemed concerned. Loki was unsure what to make of it. Perhaps Thor was having a liaison with a buxom elf or had caught wind of an adventure, maybe both. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But a few hours later, Hogun knocked on Loki’s door.

“Enter,” Loki said, surprised. He couldn’t remember the man ever coming to his chambers before.

“Your brother bid me give you this in private,” Hogun said, handing him a parchment sealed in wax.

“Thank you,” he said, completely baffled, and the moment the door shut once more and he was alone, he tore it open to see Thor’s haphazard, messy scrawl.

I am seeking something to do with what we discussed and will be delayed.

That was the entire message, except for Thor’s signature, the T, as usual, a doodle of Mjolnir.

Loki replayed their last conversation in his mind.

“Please, Norns, he isn’t looking for an acceptable prostitute he thinks will distract me,” Loki said with a sigh, rubbing his forehead.

But another thought occurred to him, a tiny whisper in the back of his mind, wondering if perhaps Thor had found some shred of hope about Anthony’s heart. It seemed wildly unlikely that his brother might stumble into something on pure chance when Loki had spent years searching every possible source, but then, odder things had happened.

Two months came and went, and by now Frigga, though she never complained, was nearly beside herself with worry, and Loki was growing concerned as well. Wherever he was, Thor was not visible to Heimdall, and that was deeply troubling. If Thor really had come to harm in trying to aid him, ridiculous and ill-advised as his plans usually were, Loki wasn’t sure his heart could take the sorrow of this as well before it cracked apart. In spite of everything, blood or not, he realized he loved his dunderheaded but ultimately goodhearted brother.

Both Peter and Anthony realized the strain he was under, though Loki had told no one of his suspicions regarding Thor’s absence. At lunch, Peter had started offering Loki the sweets his aunt sometimes baked for him. They were, honestly, horrible, but Loki appreciated the thought. Anthony, for his part, was even more quiet than usual. He did assure Loki that he needn’t come to the forge if he was required elsewhere, but sitting and staring at the walls of his chambers or wandering the corridors of the palace was wearing on his nerves. At least at the workshop, he felt useful.

It was there that the messenger found Loki.

“My prince,” the man said, bowing and holding the sealed letter out to him, “a message from your brother.”

“Thank you,” he said, feeling himself go numb as he took the scroll.

The man departed at once, and Peter and Anthony looked at one another with matching expressions of dread.

“Should we stay or go?” Peter asked.

“I should like a few minutes alone, I believe,” Loki said. “Excuse me.”

He immediately disappeared, teleporting to his chambers and sitting in front of the fire. Preparing himself for practically anything, he took a deep breath, then broke the seal.

Brother, on Alfheim, several Jotuns were also present to speak with the Elves regarding trade. As you know, Alfheim is on much better terms with Jotunheim than Asgard is. While I was there, I entreated some of the Alfheim dignitaries to ask whether there might be any solution to the problem of your heart residing in Anthony’s body, leaving out the particulars of whom this had happened to, of course.

Loki’s eyebrows were raised in surprise. The idea that Thor would even consider asking Jotuns directly about the situation was completely unexpected. While Frigga had repeatedly joined him in the library and attempted to aid him, Thor tracking down a potential lead was completely new.

While it took over a week to even broach the subject, I was surprised to find the Jotuns were amenable to at least speaking about it. One thing I learned, as you no doubt already know, is that the Jotuns do not usually entrust spells to writing.

Loki nodded at the letter, stunned. Thor was entirely correct. He had been limited to reading accounts or commentaries about different charms from those few outsiders who had witnessed Jotun magic, but nothing directly from a Jotun mage.

However, though they do not give away their secrets lightly, at least one Jotun I met was open to the possibility of bargaining for this bit of information.

Loki’s heart completely stopped. It simply wasn’t possible.

I am hopeful I may be able to offer something that will procure us the answer to your quandary. Understand, I may be delayed for some time. Give my regards to Mother.

Loki re-read the letter three times, each time lurching between confusion and wild hope. Eventually, he realized that he would need more information before he could draw any real conclusions. A thousand things could go wrong. All possibilities considered, he chose to remain silent for now where Anthony and Peter were concerned. He would speak of it to Frigga because she might have some knowledge of the subject, but no one else.

He quickly teleported to his mother’s chamber door and knocked a little too loudly. She opened the door almost at once.

“What is wrong?” she asked immediately, and he noticed again how drawn she looked.

“Nothing,” he assured her quickly. “I have news from Thor. He is well.”

“Is he?” Frigga said, but she didn’t look convinced. “Come in.”

Loki showed her the note, but her face appeared no less worried.

“I do not like the sound of this,” Frigga said. “It could be a trap to lure Thor and turn him into a hostage. The Jotuns are notoriously jealous in guarding their magic. This seems too easy, and my mind already misgives. I have had troubling dreams about him of late, and this fits them too well.”

“You believe he has fallen into a snare?” Loki said, then sighed. “Entirely too plausible a concern, I fear.”

“He means well,” Frigga said, “but his confidence in his strength makes him overbold.”

“If anything harms him because he wishes to help me and mine,” Loki said, leaving the thought unfinished.

Time crawled, and still nothing more was heard from Thor. A full month passed, and Odin had begun sending emissaries to the various realms to search quietly for him, but nothing was discovered.

It was just past midnight one evening when a knock upon Loki’s door jolted him from sleep. He got out of bed immediately and charmed on his clothes in the seconds it took to reach and open the door. To his shock, Heimdall himself stood on the other side.

“My prince, your brother has returned,” he said quietly. “He used the Bifrost and has asked me to tell you he is in his rooms.”

“Is he well?” Loki asked.

“You should go to him,” Heimdall said, his expression dark, “at once.”

Heimdall then strode off down the corridor, undoubtedly returning to his post. His mere appearance anywhere other than the Bifrost was frightening for its rarity, but his words were enough to send a chill down Loki’s spine. Even more disturbing, Heimdall had chosen him for this message, not Odin or Frigga.

Loki appeared so quickly outside Thor’s door he didn’t even remember willing himself to teleport. He bit back the urge to pound on the door and instead knocked, then waited.

“Loki?”

It was Thor’s voice, but he sounded weak. If Heimdall’s words weren’t haunting him, Loki would have wondered if he had accidentally roused him from sleep.

“Yes. Heimdall told me of your arrival. Is aught wrong?”

There was a shuffling noise, and then he heard something land heavily on the floor with an accompanying grunt. No longer standing on manners, Loki banged the door open to find his brother lying on the floor in a crumpled heap, barely moving. For a wild moment, he thought Thor might be drunk. He’d half-carried his brother home more than once after a victory party, but instinct told him this wasn’t that.

“What ails you?” he asked quickly, kneeling beside him.

“I have it,” Thor mumbled. “It is in an envelope on the table. But beware, it has never before been used by a Jotun on an Aesir, only on someone from Vanaheim.”

“Good, yes, but what is wrong with you?” Loki said.

“The price was a heavy one, brother,” he said, then slowly raised his head to look at Loki, whose face went white as paper.

“What have you done?” Loki said, choosing not to believe what he saw. “Thor, what happened to your eye!”

Thor grimaced, then winced in pain.

“It was part of the required payment,” Thor said. “After months of negotiations, of assuring them that no nefarious use would be the result of giving me the information, they said that to earn the spell, they demanded a show of my dedication to achieving my goal. The price was my right eye with a vow of no retaliation.”

Loki stared in disbelief.

“They might have been lying,” Loki said. “You realize this all may have been done for no other reason than to humiliate you?”

“I do,” Thor said, then smiled at him, his remaining eye still managing to twinkle. “But if there is a chance it will repair your Anthony’s heart, it is worth the risk.”

“You stupid, oversized, idiotic fool!” Loki yelled, but by the time he had finished the insult, he was sobbing, his arms around Thor’s neck. “I swear to you, brother, you will have a new eye if I have to give you a mismatched set by plucking out one of my own!”

Loki felt Thor’s arms wrap around him tightly, and from that moment, Loki never again doubted that he was truly his brother.

“Now, if you would be so kind as to give me a hand up,” Thor said, “I stumbled over something and fell. My depth perception is askew. Also, I have felt better. I would rather Mother in particular did not see me just yet.”

“But the healers?” Loki suggested, tugging him upwards to his feet.

“Yes, I will go to them, but I wanted to deliver the information to you in private first,” Thor said.

Loki nodded, slipping the envelope into an inside pocket of his jacket, then took hold of his brother’s arm again and immediately teleported them to the Healing Room. After a moment of startled confusion, five healers were seeing to Thor at once, who collapsed in exhaustion onto a bed.

“In an hour I will call on Mother and let her know,” Loki said. “That should give the healers enough time to tidy you up adequately. Until then, rest well, brother. And thank you.”

Loki left the healers to their work, disappearing quickly and returning to his chambers. When he reached them, he was almost terrified to open the parchment, half certain it would contain nothing at all. When he finally did break the seal, he was startled to read what certainly appeared to be an authentic account of a situation similar in most details to his own. A Jotun had been present when a Vanaheim warrior had been cleaved through the heart by an assassin, and the same trick of taking out his own, splitting it in two, rapidly growing each half into a whole, and then placing one back into his own chest and the other into the warrior’s was all too familiar. So was the expected result: the warrior lived, but without the ability to love.

But that was not where the account ended.

The answer to the problem had come from another Jotun mage who had suggested that the issue stemmed from the difference in temperature between a Vanaheim heart and a Jotun one. In an effort to protect itself from the overwhelming heat of the foreign body, the Jotun heart had essentially frozen itself, and in doing so, had somehow affected the warrior’s soul, numbing it on a psychic level. It was still there, but, for lack of a better description, encased in ice.

The mage had managed to perform a spell to warm the natural state of the Jotun heart enough that it no longer felt it was being attacked, and once that was accomplished, it adjusted quickly to its new host. The end result was the warrior’s soul was awakened, and all had been well.

But, in spite of the joy Loki felt at the words, there was also concern. Thor was right. While the Aesir looked much like the inhabitants of Vanaheim, biological differences were still present. Their body temperatures were not identical, and a variety of other factors would also need to be examined. This might be the answer, but it would have to be carefully researched and adapted to ensure no further harm would befall Anthony. He would not risk another mistake. Not again.

The hour had passed, and Loki tucked the parchment back into his pocket. Taking a steadying breath, he teleported to the door of the king and queen’s apartments. Minutes later, the whole palace was in an uproar as the knowledge spread far and wide that the crown prince, though injured, was at long last home once more.