Fic: Apples to Apples (Marvel)

[bookishwench]

Thor was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, after his time on Midgard. Loki’s death and his separation from Jane were so painful that when at last he did sleep, he slept long and deep. Perhaps that was why he wasn’t awakened by the distant smell of smoke and a rhythmic thumping until far late into the day after his return. When at last he rolled over in bed and caught the odd sound paired with the smell, he was only mildly puzzled, but some sense of doom made him sit up and listen.

“It’s not possible,” he murmured, then, as he became more certain, his heart sped up with anger. “It cannot be possible!”

Thor summoned Mjolnir, the handle slapping obediently into his hand, and he flew off at break-neck speed towards the west. He hoped he was wrong, but something in him said his fears were justified. He could already see the smoke.

“No!” he yelled, landing beside his father. “What have you done!”

Thor looked around the orchard of Idunn’s apples with horror. Every tree had been felled, and the Einherjar were feeding the trunks and branches into a great bonfire, its lurid red flames licking towards the sky.

“Thor, you are not thinking clearly,” Odin said, laying a hand on his shoulder that Thor immediately cast off. “That was why I had to do this.”

“But why!” he said, the smoking stinging his eyes. “Why would you do this thing?”

“The bloodlines of the Aesir must remain pure,” Odin said sternly. “I would not have you pollute them with Midgardian weakness. In a few decades at most, the mortal Jane Foster will die, and though you will mourn, you will move on and realize that only another immortal could ever be your true match.”

“You destroyed the apples of immortality because I love Jane?” Thor said, his heart breaking twice over, once for his lovely Jane now doomed to a brief life, and once for any love he bore his father.

“You do not love her!” Odin said, his voice rising. “That is not possible! She is little more than an insect compared to our kind, unworthy of your interest!”

Thor scanned the orchard again, but there was nothing left alive that he could see, no hope at all.

“Once, you banished me,” Thor said, “and I have not forgotten your inexplicable fury even yet.”

“Thor, that was four days ago,” Odin said in exasperation.

“Those four days may as well have been four centuries for all that has happened,” Thor said, “and I begin to see many things more clearly. None more than my image of you.”

Odin looked concerned but said nothing.

“Where is Mother?” Thor asked.

“She mourns Loki,” Odin said, shaking his head. “She has locked herself in her room and refuses to come out.”

“So she knows nothing of this?”

“No.”

“Then she, at least, is innocent,” Thor said, the smallest bit of relief in his eyes as one last member of his family remained both alive and sane.

“I swear to you, my son, you will understand in time, and when this ridiculous passion of yours is spent, you will thank me,” Odin said, his voice almost gentle. “When the Bifrost is repaired, I will not forbid you from seeing the girl. Go, bed her, do what you will, even get children upon her if that is your wish. I have done the same with a few comely Midgardian women in my time, but realize all of them will die right before your eyes as the years tick swiftly past. You will see the folly of what you now call love.”

“All because you would have me wed an Aesir maiden and no other?” Thor asked, looking at his father as though he did not know him.

“To keep the throne clean of any other race, yes,” Odin said.

“But you adopted Loki, a Jotun!” Thor said. “You made him second in line to the throne!”

“And I can see now what a terrible mistake that was,” Odin sighed. “I should have left that babe to die in the temple where he was abandoned. It is better that he is dead.”

Thor stared at him, unable to form words for a long time as his heart twisted.

“I have been wrong about many things, but in my estimation of you, though given in anger, I was right. You are an old man and a fool,” Thor said quietly, a sharp contrast from how he had once screamed the words. “I bid you farewell.”

Thor flew off, landing near one of the ships Asgardians used to travel to closer destinations than those that required the Bifrost. The captain looked in shock at Thor.

“Where are you going?” Thor asked.

“Alfheim,” the captain said.

“Then so am I,” Thor said, walking past him and finding an empty storage room where he could sit and stare out a window as his home faded into the distance.

Months passed. Thor knew Heimdall could see him, which meant that Odin knew exactly where Thor was, but he did nothing to contact him. At least his mother would know he was fine, or as fine as he could be under the circumstances. He was living under an assumed name and working hauling stone in a quarry on the planet Quarzek. No one bothered about him much, and he honestly wasn’t sure what he should do next. He wanted to journey to Earth again and see Jane, who was never far from his thoughts, but the destruction of the Orchard of Immortality meant that they would have but a short time together, and it was as though the pain of losing her was already haunting him.

Buyers came and went from the planet, purchasing slabs of stone for building cities or palaces, and ships from all over the universe were a normal sight. What wasn’t normal was the day one of them dropped its loading ramp and a tall, dark-haired man walked down it.

“Loki?” Thor whispered, not able to believe what he was seeing.

He watched from a distance as the man walked away, speaking with what looked like an older man and laughing pleasantly at something he said.

Thor followed, watching them, wondering if he had gone mad and was hallucinating that his dead brother’s ghost was casually stopping by to haunt him. He supposed it was exactly the sort of thing he would do.

Just at that moment, Loki turned in the wrong direction and caught sight of Thor, his eyebrows shooting up. He froze, obviously looking for an exit, and finding none, did the only thing left: he walked towards him.

“Brother?” Thor said uncertainly.

“Who else?” Loki said. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

“Hauling stone,” Thor said.

“I can see that, but why?” Loki asked impatiently as though he were speaking to a toddler.

“Father and I had a falling out,” Thor said. “Why are you not dead?”

“Would you rather I were?” Loki asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course not!” Thor said, gripping his brother’s arm. “I have mourned a long time for you.”

“When I fell, I wound up on a charming little planet called Sakaar,” Loki said, rolling his eyes to make it clear “charming” was the last thing he would call it. “There were far worse places I could have ended up, I suppose, but I’m growing restless.”

“Then stay here for a while,” Thor said.

“What, in your tin shanty hut?” Loki said, wrinkling his nose.

“Good company makes the lowliest hovel a palace,” Thor said, “and I can think of no one I would rather speak with, save one.”

Loki rolled his eyes again at the reference to Jane, but waved a hand at a servant, who immediately stopped.

“Tell the Grandmaster I have some business to attend to and shall speak with him soon,” he said.

The servant bowed and left.

“Lead the way. Or are you planning to kill me?” Loki asked, looking as though this was a perfectly acceptable possibility.

“No, unless you attempt stabbing me again,” Thor said.

“Why would I ever do that?” Loki said, then grinned.

The pair of them sat for a while and ate a simple meal of bread and what passed for ale on Quarzek. Loki sniffed at it, but didn’t outright complain.

“So, what exactly did Odin do to make his golden child run away from home?” Loki finally asked.

“In an attempt to secure a pure bloodline, he destroyed all of Idunn’s apples,” Thor said, looking downcast.

“Did he?” Loki said, looking not the least surprised.

“You behave as though you were expecting this,” Thor said.

“I rather did, actually,” Loki said. “Your father is, to put it mildly, a fanatic about the superiority of the Aesir, or have you not noticed?”

“Is he not also your father?” Thor said.

“No,” Loki said, putting down the battered metal cup that held his ale, “he is not. I have not yet decided about Frigga, but I am leaning towards some leniency with her. Eventually.”

“I am certain she misses you greatly,” Thor said. “She was mourning you when I left.”

“Well, at least someone was,” Loki said, shrugging. “Anyway, the revelation that I was Jotun made rather a lot of sense of why he always showed favoritism towards you over me. He saw me as lesser. And you’ve seen how he treats elves, dwarves, and humans.”

“You were wiser than I,” Thor said.

“Oh, do say that again,” Loki said, smirking. “I so enjoy it.”

“But your clear-sightedness does not undo the damage.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” Loki said.

“I don’t understand,” Thor said.

“Really, you should write that on a sign and hold it up when needed to save wear on your vocal cords,” Loki said. “No, after I realized I was Jotun, I suddenly had the shock of not knowing exactly how long they live on average.”

“I don’t know that either,” Thor said, frowning.

“Another sign for you to make,” Loki said. “It turns out the species is fairly long-lived, but not quite so long as the Aesir, running about a thousand years less on average. Obviously, I wasn’t about to be short-changed in that regard, so I took certain steps.”

“Did you eat one of the apples?” Thor asked.

“Think back, Thor. They were out of season during my brief stint as king and wouldn’t ripen for several months,” Loki said.

Thor nodded, remembering the trees had been only in bloom when his father had destroyed them.

“However, you know how mercurial the Odinsleep is,” Loki said, “and I wasn’t about to risk him awakening and withholding an apple from me as a worthless Jotun.”

“So what did you do?”

“Simple. I stole a tree,” Loki said, taking a bite of bread with a flourish, then spitting it out. “Great Norns, Thor, this is dreadful! Don’t you at least have some butter? It’s as dry as sand.”

“You stole a tree?” Thor said. “How?”

“I simply teleported it to another location, made sure it was planted well, guarded it with a variety of wards, and intended to come back when the apples were ripe once more,” Loki said. “That way, even if I should be exiled, one would still be available for me to eat.”

“And did you?”

“I think you recall I fell off the bridge and into the void, Thor,” Loki said slowly. “I’ve been rather busy.”

“But the tree is… still safe?” Thor said.

“So far as I know, yes,” Loki said.

“Where is it?”

Loki smiled but said nothing, taking another sip of ale.

“Please?”

“You would give one to this woman of yours?” Loki said, shaking his head.

“Have you never loved anyone at all, Loki?”

“Of course I have,” he said. “Myself. That is the only person I can imagine not growing weary of in time.”

“I would not have her die in so short a span. I would offer it to her and plead for her to be my bride,” Thor said, gripping his brother’s hand.

Loki looked at the ceiling, squinting his eyes as though he were considering.

“Hmm. Let me see. This would enrage Odin, make Mother happy, and allow me the opportunity to consume the apple I never got around to tasting,” he said, numbering the points off on his fingers, then stopping to look at Thor. “Of course, it would also make you happy, but everything has drawbacks, and I believe it would put you squarely in my debt, which could be most useful.”

Thor waited, silently begging him.

“Oh, fine,” Loki said, slamming the rest of the ale at one go. “It’s on Midgard.”

“But the Bifrost is broken,” Thor said. “We can’t get there.”

“You mean you can’t get there,” Loki said. “I have my own ways.”

A battered full-length mirror hung upon one wall of the cabin, and Loki regarded it critically.

“Disgustingly dirty, but it will do,” Loki said after examining it. “Fine. Come here.”

Thor walked uncertainly towards the mirror, and Loki grabbed his elbow and suddenly threw both of them through it. Instead of shattering, the mirror opened, and Thor spent several seconds screaming in whirling blackness before he tumbled out the other side and onto a grassy hill. Loki looked down at him, unfazed

“That was fun,” Loki said, smirking.

“No, it wasn’t,” Thor said, scrambling to his feet while his stomach lurched wildly.

“Anyway, it’s around here somewhere,” Loki said, scanning the surrounding area of densely packed trees. “Ah. There.”

He pointed to a spot about a hundred feet away, and Thor could see the bright red fruit hanging from the branches. No one else was around, and he ran eagerly towards it, followed by Loki, who walked at a more dignified pace.

“Go on,” Loki said, motioning with his hand. “Take one.”

“What is the catch?” Thor asked.

“Why would there be one?”

“It’s you.”

“Fair point,” Loki said, leaning against the trunk, plucking an apple and polishing it on his sleeve before taking a bite. “Oh, this really is quite nice.”

“So, what is it you want me to do?”

Loki took another bite and made a show of pondering, staring up into the tree.

“For one apple,” he said, “I would require you to…”

“Yes?” Thor asked.

“Every idea I come up with is simply not good enough,” Loki said, shaking his head woefully. “You suggest something.”

Thor looked surprised.

“I could…” he stopped, unsure. “I could give you my undying friendship!”

Loki waved that away.

“I could abdicate my place on the throne to you.”

“You’d need Odin’s agreement, and you won’t get it,” Loki said, frowning.

“I could introduce you to the Vanaheim maiden I courted two years ago,” Thor said, shrugging. “You seemed taken with her.”

“Already did that,” Loki said.

“Really?”

“Two hours after you ended your relationship,” Loki said, taking another bite.

“Two hours?” Thor said. “I do not believe it.”

“She has a mole shaped like a heart on the inside of her left thigh.”

“I believe it,” Thor said, his posture sagging.

“What else have you to barter?” Loki asked.

“My skill in combat?”

“That’s something,” Loki said, considering, then shaking his head. “No. I’m quite capable of defending myself. I suppose if I ever had to contend with a particularly obstinate jar of pickles you might be able to open it for me with your superior strength, but really, how often is that likely to happen?”

“I am out of ideas, brother,” Thor said. “Please, just allow me one apple to offer Jane.”

“I like the ‘please,’” Loki said, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Alright, then, you may have an apple.”

“Thank you!” he said, reaching up to pluck one.

“After you do just one little thing,” Loki said, batting his grasping hand away like a very large cat.

“What would you have me do?”

Loki smiled widely, then took Thor’s wrist and teleported them away.

Two hours later, they returned to the same spot.

“I hate you,” Thor grumbled at him, rubbing his forearm.

“Don’t do that. It will get infected. Or smudge. Or something,” Loki said, picking an apple off the tree and handing it to him. “There, as promised. Go find your lady love and give it to her. Make her the goddess of astronomy or physics or really cute shoes or something.”

“And how am I to explain this?” Thor said, pointing to his bandaged arm.

“Inebriation? Is that not the traditional excuse for rather questionable tattoos?”

Thor glared at him.

“I think I liked you better when you were dead, brother,” Thor said, then, summoning Mjolnir, he flew off towards New Mexico to search for his Jane.

“Be sure to invite me to the wedding!” Loki called after him, waving merrily.

It took Jane all of twenty minutes after Thor arrived before she carefully unwrapped the bandage on his right arm and read the bold green words written in an elegant script, “Loki is a sexy beast.”

They did not invite him to the wedding.

Granted, he showed up anyway, but it was principle of the thing.