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The words before his eyes blurred, not from exhaustion or sorrow, but incomprehension. He knew the language, had known the handwriting his entire life, yet making sense of what she had written was impossible – his mind refused to attempt it. He stared at the page for almost an hour before he had to push the book away.
He was still staring down at the table when he sensed movement outside the cell door. Sighing deeply, he asked, “What do you want?”
“I thought perhaps you might need to talk.”
Loki lifted his eyes, regarded Thor with faint amusement. “Why would I want to talk to you?”
“I did not say want. I said need. The mortals are clever, but they are not of Asgard. They cannot know the true import behind these events.”
“Can you tell me honestly you had no knowledge of any of this?”
Thor frowned. “Of the dreamfasting? Of course not. How would I—“
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Surely you read the rest of this journal before you brought it here, to be sure there was nothing in it that would threaten the security of Asgard. The innermost thoughts of the Queen, in human hands…as Odin’s heir even you would have been smarter than that.”
Thor ignored the insult completely. In fact, he looked away. “All right. Yes, I read it.”
“It’s strange,” Loki said almost to himself. “The Captain and I were just discussing this very thing tonight. In all my years I never even entertained the possibility, but he came up with it immediately…he with his compassionate heart couldn’t believe I was cast aside so callously…even though Odin would have done the same had it been to his advantage…as would Fury. Whatever power I possess, or have tried to take, my whole life has been given to the whims of others.”
“Father loved you,” Thor said quietly. “He does still.”
“No he doesn’t. Never then and certainly not now. Mother did. You did. She had a son. You had a little brother. He had the spoils of war in a form he could mold to his liking.”
“Loki—“
“Odin underestimates his ambition,” Loki quoted, practically snarling the words. “He asked me to teach Loki magic to channel his power, to give him an outlet and keep him from asking questions. Such magic in the hands of a Frost Giant is a terrible thought – perhaps I can take comfort knowing that Loki only has half that blood to bear...or perhaps, given the truth, I should worry even more.”
“Does it not comfort you as well?” Thor demanded. “Knowing that Laufey’s kind can only claim half of you?”
“Of course not!” Loki, no longer able to sit still, pushed himself away from the table and the books and stood up. “You cannot possibly understand this. You have known from birth exactly who and what you are. Only once have you ever had to live without the nurturing wings of your identity, for less than a week, and of course, you came out of it considered even greater by all.”
Thor was listening to him with full attention, which was an odd feeling, but he went on. “I have had everything I know about myself snatched away time and again, used against me, bent and broken to be weaponized. I cling to whatever of myself I can and yet here I stand, learning only moments ago that I am again not what I thought. No, brother, there is no comfort to be had in any of this. There is only one comfort for me anywhere in the Realms and I am expected to destroy even that.”
Slowly, Thor nodded, then lowered his head. “I had not thought of it that way. I apologize.”
Loki stared at him for a minute, surprised. He couldn’t remember the last time either of them had apologized to the other – no, he could, it had been the day Loki had “died” in the barren lands of the Dark World, though whether it was sincere or not, even Loki couldn’t say now.
Then Thor said, “Perhaps it means little for me to say you are my brother no matter where you came from – but it is true.”
Loki paused in his pacing and placed both hands on the table, leaning over the books. “Do you know what this says? What must happen for me to give the Captain his life back?”
“Loki…Steve Rogers likes his life with you just fine. He does not want it broken.”
“That’s because the spell is doing exactly what it was cast for – to save Frigga’s wayward child from himself, even at another’s expense. Meanwhile any hope he has of continuing his work here, or not being branded in the public eye as a traitor to his species, dwindles every time he walks into this cell. I have heard them all talking – no one believes that in his right mind he would throw his life away for something like me.”
Thor started to protest, but Loki cut him off: “Tell me how he could possibly benefit, over the long run, from this tie – and how he would diminish no longer tethered to me. Can you?”
Loki had joked, when they were younger, that Thor’s “thoughtful” face was indistinguishable from his “constipated” face, but the former had definitely grown easier to spot over the years. Thor said, “I do not think it is up to me – or you – to say what is best for him. He knows his own heart and is a grown man. Even if there is a way to break the dreamfasting, I do not think you have the right to do so on his behalf. Perhaps his judgment is clouded and perhaps not…but so is yours, brother. I know you well enough to know you do not believe yourself worthy of any kind of love, and I know that given the opportunity you will destroy any beauty handed to you thinking since it would only be taken anyway, why bother?”
He stared at Thor again, feeling rattled for no reason he could define. “As I said…you cannot possibly understand.” After a long moment, Loki looked down at the books and said, “If you want to know what it says, come in and I’ll show you.”
Thor looked almost pathetically pleased at the invitation. He entered the door code and stepped into the cell, making the room seem minuscule just by being in it. He came to stand by the table. “So you can read the text.”
Sighing, Loki waved a hand over the ancient writing, and it morphed into its modern-day equivalent, the same as Frigga’s notes. Thor’s eyes moved over the words in silence before he observed, “This is powerful magic indeed. Just from what I remember Mother saying over the years about her work, it looks to be incredibly complicated. I freely admit I cannot see a counterspell within it.”
“There isn’t one,” Loki replied. “No sorcery can undo a dreamfasting. There are ways to lessen its strength, but in doing so you weaken both victims, and I daresay SHIELD would prefer a dreamfasted Captain America to a weak one.”
He waited for Thor to make the logical conclusion, but he didn’t. “That’s good, then. You know the source of the dreamfasting, can learn more about it, but Fury cannot compel Rogers to break it. Perhaps you can find ways to work with it that will even improve the Captain’s performance, and show everyone that it is a good thing.”
Thor looked so pleased it was almost heartbreaking, and for a moment Loki wished with all his being that things could be as they had been once, when they had laughed and fought together with trust and affection…but that, too, had been an illusion. Their camaraderie had covered festering resentment on Loki’s part and blindness on Thor’s.
Now there was another gulf between them, the question neither could answer: what was Loki, really? Not Asgardian, only half Jotun, and…what? Something powerful, something the Jotuns either feared or reviled or both…it felt like every time he and Thor stood in the same room they were less and less brothers, no matter how desperately Thor clung to the word.
“I shall leave these with you,” Thor said, gesturing at the books. “Perhaps, if you like, I can smuggle more of Mother’s journals off Asgard for you – Father would have them gathering dust in the Hall of Lore, but you might be able to learn more about your birth in their pages.”
“If you are caught, the Allfather will be furious,” Loki said tiredly.
“I will not be caught. That is one good thing about being the honest, upstanding brother.” Thor grinned broadly and made as if to go. “No one suspects a thing.” He paused at the doorway and said, “I will come back and see you ere I leave for the Realm Eternal again…if that would be agreeable to you.”
Loki, who had already sunk down onto the couch, looked at him, unable to prevent the slight smile Thor’s words evoked. “Do as you wish.”
Thor left him then. The cell seemed to ring with silence in his wake. Even walking around a human base without his cape or Mjolnir, he was an outsized creature, larger than life.
And, as always, even without the Hammer he was still armed – standard Asgardian warrior issue included a sword or other long blade and at least one dagger. Thor had no need of a sword, and in fact one would get in his way while swinging his arm about, but for over a century he’d carried a pair of small blades identical to his brother’s. Those blades had no enchantment on them – no standard of worthiness.
They were tragically easy to steal.
Loki stood again and returned to the table. He lifted the back cover of the Lore book a few inches so he could see beneath it but hopefully the various recording devices in the cell would not. The relatively plain hilt of the dagger was wrapped in leather that looked new. The blade itself was carved with protective Runes. They had been a gift from the Allfather after a successful campaign of blood and fire against one of Asgard’s many enemies…one of several whose transgressions Odin refused to divulge. He had simply pointed at the map and turned his army on another realm.
At the time it had been a triumph. Now, though…Loki thought back to those days of mindlessly following orders in the hope of winning the King’s approval…how different was that, really, from being brainwashed by Thanos? Instead of pain and torment Odin had merely dangled his affections and continually pulled them away.
And…now, he wondered…were any of those “enemies” the people from which his non-Jotun half had come? Had they been destroyed because of that?
He touched the Lore book’s pages again, banishing the illusion he’d shown Thor.
For once he hadn’t needed to lie; there was no counterspell in the words of the text…but he had learned at his mother’s knee how to decipher far more than that.
It was fairly easy for anyone to learn the sacred language of old Asgard, though traditionally it was reserved for scholars and those of supposedly exalted bloodlines. Loki imagined the scandal if it got out that a mortal could read it, though to Steve it was still just words. The Elder Runes were an alphabet, yes, but each glyph also symbolized a concept that in itself could carry several interpretations. Skilled mages could craft a spell that read out as an incantation but also had a second level of meaning, one that revealed additional instructions or, in some cases, a way to undo or break the spell. Sometimes the written spell was in fact a decoy – simply using it as it appeared would either do nothing or do something unpleasant to the caster.
Thor had been correct, then, in his observation that the spell was complicated – mostly because what he’d been looking at wasn’t the spell at all. The instructions Thor could see were a labyrinth of dead ends and imaginary ingredients. The real dreamfasting was written in that deeper symbolic level. It was, essentially, encoded. The Queen’s notes were written in modern language; the Elder Runes had become archaic, like Latin. An outsider might not realize she was writing about the symbolic meaning.
Depending on one’s definition of “outsider,” he supposed.
He reached over and took up Frigga’s journal. It felt so light in his hands. It should have had covers of steel and pages of silk. He held it up and inhaled the scent of the paper; it had the combined smells of the Queen’s chambers, flowers and herbs and the particular ink she used to write down her workings. Paging through it, he could hear her voice in the words.
“Have I made you proud?” he murmured, thinking of the last time he had been in her true physical presence. She had visited him many times in the dungeon, but in illusory form – no less real, but untouchable. Distance…always distance.
“I know you tried,” he went on quietly. “You didn’t have much to work with, really. It’s not your fault I ended up like this…but I would thank you, if I could, regardless. The last few months have been…more than I deserve.”
The timing would have to be perfect – there was about a two-minute response time once a disturbance was detected in the Zoo. It seemed a bit slow, but considering how dangerous the occupants were, SHIELD had to take precautions, which meant the security staff watching the monitors had to figure out what kind of emergency was afoot and then summon the appropriate responders. There weren’t any human guards on the Zoo itself; they took for granted that Stark’s technology would be sufficient, or at least acted as though they believed it.
For this whole arrangement with Fury to work they had to keep up appearances. Loki would appear to be a prisoner, pretend he couldn’t simply vanish as he had before; and Fury would pretend he didn’t plan to have Loki killed the second Captain Rogers was free of the dreamfasting. It was a staring contest, waiting to see who blinked first. Everyone knew there was no way it could last…no way any of it could last.
That was the way of the universe, though. Nothing beautiful ever lasted for long. The singing flowers of N’dath’el’ith bloomed for less than an hour. Human lives were over in less than a hundred years. A hero’s life was almost always shorter.
If everyone else was lucky a villain’s was shorter than that.
He slid his hand under the lore book’s cover and closed his fingers around the dagger’s hilt.
*****
Steve knew the second he heard the alarms that something was very, very wrong. He could feel it – panic building even as he woke, the immense weight of dread and the pull of fear.
He heard Natasha’s voice over the intercom in his apartment after he’d already hit the hallway, but didn’t go back to answer her.
There were people all over the Zoo – far more than there had been the last time he’d come running down the stairs. There were armed guards, doctors, and Avengers clogging the hallway, and even the other inmates were craning to get a look.
He pushed through crowd and up to the door of Cell E.
“Steve—“ Natasha grabbed his arm. “Don’t—“
He glanced over at Thor, who was standing at the glass practically pressed against it like a kid at a pet store, but the look on his face was anguished. Steve followed his gaze.
His knees nearly buckled.
There were medical staffers in the way, but he could still see what they were hovering and kneeling around: blood. There was so much blood.
Steve made a sound like a trapped, dying animal and tried to force his way in, but both Thor and Natasha dragged him back.
“You have to give them room,” Tash said. There was genuine shock and fear in her eyes – shock at what was happening, but fear for Steve, for what he might do if…
“He’s dead, isn’t he,” he said softly, going limp in their grip. “Oh, God…”
Thor supported him without seeming to make any effort. “I do not know,” he replied. “There—“
Whatever he was saying disappeared in the noise of a stretcher being rolled in from the elevator. The lead medic entered the code to open up the cell’s front all the way so there would be room.
Steve watched, helpless, as the medics moved back to let the stretcher through, and he got a glimpse of…
He felt sick. He pushed back away from Thor and Tash, who let him go once they saw he wasn’t going to try and get closer, and sank to the floor against the wall, head down.
Frost Giant blood was apparently much darker than Asgardian. He’d seen Thor bleed a few times, just from scrapes. His looked pretty much the same as human blood.
“Blood pressure is falling—“
“I want three units of O negative waiting for us.”
“Doctor it might not be compatible—“
“It’s our only option. Okay, 1, 2, 3, up!”
He couldn’t look. He couldn’t stand to see the reality of what had happened, whatever it was. He couldn’t look at that seeming lake of blood all over the floor again. He heard the stretcher wheel past at speed, taking with it the urgent murmur of the medics and the erratic beeping of whatever monitor they had affixed to the rail, but even trying to look up – it might be his last chance, might be the last time – he saw a hand fall over the side of the stretcher, saw the blood that was dripping from it and leaving a trail of droplets all down the hallway, and he nearly broke down.
Tash knelt beside him, placing herself between him and the view of the cell. “Steve…can you hear me?”
He nodded vaguely.
“Do you know what might have happened?” she asked. “Or why?”
“I do,” Thor said. His voice was farther away – inside the cell. Steve lifted his head enough to see Thor without looking at the ground. “This is mine,” he went on, holding up a bloodstained dagger. “I did not notice it was missing until too late. I believe…I was here earlier, discussing the dreamfasting with my brother – he must have taken it.”
“I thought he could pull weapons out of the air,” Tash said.
“Yes, when it is necessary. But magic would have set off the alarm much sooner. It would seem he did not want anyone to see what he was doing until it was done.” His voice grew thick with emotion. “There was no counterspell…but I should have remembered…Mother once said that magic cast upon people cannot outlast their lives.”
Tash turned back to Steve. “Let’s get you up to the infirmary—“
He couldn’t respond. The only thing he could hear, in that second, was in his mind: the long, shrill, continuous sound of a flatline.
“No,” Steve said hoarsely. “No, no…”
The doctors were trying. He knew they were – he could hear them, for some reason, in his head. But they were trying to save a completely different species using knowledge meant for Earth. If they’d been on Asgard there would have been magic…
…magic.
He remembered the pain of a bullet in his side, a kiss sending him back to the world, waking up covered in blood. Loki had healed him from a galaxy away. And if he could…Steve could. It could work. It had to work. He must still have the ability…he had to.
It was the healing that had caused the memory swap. If he succeeded, what would it cause this time?
He didn’t care.
He latched onto the sound of the flatline, let it drive his fear – fear and pain had been the catalysts before. But as much as he could gather, it wasn’t enough; there was no light, nothing to work with.
“Not enough,” he said aloud, putting his face in his hands. “It’s not strong enough.”
He felt a large hand grip his shoulder. “You know what is,” Thor told him quietly.
Steve looked up at him. Their gazes held for a second before Steve nodded. Thor squeezed his shoulder and moved back, drawing Tash with him.
Steve closed his eyes again and clenched his fists, reaching inward again but this time for something very different.
Out of instinct he put his hand over the leather cuff and imagined the stone inside working with him. He breathed in, imagining he could breathe in the feelings that were linked to the stone. He drew them closer, breathing in the comfort and happiness…wanting and aching, the sound of his voice, those hands on his skin…just laying there resting together, or kissing feverishly against the cell wall…You hardly ever smile, he’d said once, but he always made Steve laugh.
“I love you, Loki,” Steve whispered. “I love you. Don’t go. Stay with me.”
Green light filled his eyes--
He had absolutely no idea what he was doing, so he just breathed out and pushed, letting the energy surge through him with the force of waves breaking against a cliff.
This was nothing like conjuring clothes in a dream; it hurt, and it took more power than he’d even known he possessed, to bridge the distance that was slowly widening as Loki slipped farther and farther from life, almost gone—
You could be free, a part of him whispered. Just let go, and everything will be like it was.
Steve didn’t even hesitate. He reached out and, with every last iota of strength he had, took hold of Loki and braced himself, praying he was enough, that everything he had been through and had become could save a single ancient, broken heart.
“What the—“
“Doctor!”
“Everybody move the hell back!”
The voices were a hundred miles away. So was the sudden change in the heart monitor’s alarm, which stuttered in its flatline for a brief second and then began to stumble around into a rhythm.
Steve would probably have fallen if he hadn’t already been on the floor. As it was, he felt himself pass out, gratefully, surrounded by exclamations of astonishment and, more importantly, the sound of a heartbeat all around him.
*****
It was still late morning in the hidden sanctuary on Asgard when Steve opened his eyes and found himself there. When he realized where he was, he felt weak with relief.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
Steve turned toward the voice. Anger rushed into him. “You bastard,” he said. “You absolute bastard.”
Loki was standing back against one of the trees, arms crossed. “You could have been killed!”
He fired back, “You were!”
“That was the idea,” Loki snapped.
“You were seriously willing to kill yourself for me. That’s not okay, Loki.”
“What were my choices? I could remain dreamfasted to you and cause you heartache and trouble for the rest of your life, I could live without you – which, incidentally, no—or I could break the dreamfasting so at least one of us would have a future. Honestly, what should I have done? Tell me.”
The last words were an entreaty, and the fear and pain behind them made Steve’s heart hurt.
“Besides,” Loki went on, “I did everything I could to ensure your doctors would be able to revive me after my heart stopped.”
“But they couldn’t,” Steve said. “Your plan didn’t work. The dreamfasting didn’t break, and you were almost gone.”
Loki was quiet for a moment before saying, “It did break, Captain.”
“What are you talking about? It’s obviously not broken, look where we are.”
“It broke.” He smiled a little. “You remade it.”
Steve blinked. “I did what now?”
“I felt it break as I lost consciousness. But remember, I told you magic is a matter of will…even without centuries of experience, you are apparently powerful enough to re-forge the connection by sheer force of will.” Loki smiled again, this time with a touch of rueful amusement. “It would seem you’re going to need more training than I thought.”
They held each other’s eyes. Steve let out a breath, shook his head, and crossed the clearing to put his arms around Loki, who held onto him tightly for a while without speaking.
“Promise me you’ll never do that again,” Steve said against his ear. “Please…I’ve lost enough in my life…I can’t lose you too.”
He sighed. Loss, Steve knew, was something Loki understood. “I promise.”
“In fact how about you don’t do anything ‘for my own good’ without asking me what I want first.”
“As you wish.” Loki leaned down and nuzzled his neck, like a lion greeting his mate, and said, “I intended no disrespect. I was hoping that for once I could spare someone I loved pain instead of causing it.”
“I know. And I love that you want me to be happy. Just don’t operate on the assumption that that doesn’t include you.” Steve stepped back and took his arm, drawing him along into the trees, toward the waterfall. They’d been back here twice since that first encounter, and he’d learned the way quickly. Both times they’d torn into each other like wild animals, but that wasn’t what he was after today. All he wanted was a little peace before the real world interfered again.
In the clearing the sun was always gentle, the breeze always cool and apple-scented. Last time, Loki had conjured a blanket, and right before they woke left it inside the hollow tree. Steve reached in and, sure enough, it was still there – or there again, depending on how you looked at it. It was a lot easier to think of all these places as the real thing rather than just a dream – and who knew? Maybe they were. The worlds he’d seen in his sleep seemed more real, most of the time, than the waking world.
Steve unfurled the blanket and lowered himself onto it. “Lay down with me.”
Smiling, Loki obeyed, and they settled down facing each other. He noticed then that Loki looked worn – the magic might have saved his life, but it hadn’t necessarily healed everything. “Are you okay?” Steve asked after a moment.
“I am now.”
“I mean physically. I didn’t know what I was doing – I just grabbed on and wouldn’t let go.”
Loki nodded, causing a strand of black hair to fall into his eyes. Steve brushed it out of the way, earning a sweet smile. “I am still injured but much less severely. I think they gave me stitches, the barbarians.”
“Well we can’t all come from advanced civilizations.”
Loki reached over and touched his face. His fingers ran along Steve’s jaw, up over his lips, and around the back of his neck, where they rested, warm and alive. “I will be fine. It may take a few days.”
Steve worked a hand up underneath his shirt so he could press his palm to Loki’s chest and feel the reassuring rhythm of his heart. Here there was no wound; he had a feeling what was really there would feel far less comforting. For now, though, it was enough to know that in both places that heart was still beating.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve murmured. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid.” He met Loki’s eyes – their blue was clouded with emotion, guilt at the forefront, and that wouldn’t do. “But it’s okay now. We’re okay. Everything’s going to be all right.”
There was, however, one thing he was worried about. He waited until he’d drawn Loki closer, kissed him softly, and they were both relaxed before asking: “Do you think there will be any side effects from what I did, like the memory swapping? Will that start up again?”
“I honestly don’t know,” was the quiet reply. “I hope not, for your sake. The book did say that the more the connection is used – for whatever purpose – the stronger it would become.”
Something occurred to Steve, and his heart leapt. “How long would you say you were technically dead?”
“Perhaps two minutes. I would have to ask the doctor. Why?”
“Because all this time we’ve both been so afraid our feelings weren’t real…but that two minutes proves they are.”
“How can you be sure?”
Steve held up the wrist that bore the fluorite cuff. “I used this as a focus. You remember what my magic words were – I used that emotion to draw up the power I needed, power I still had even though the spell was supposedly broken. If I didn’t really love you, it wouldn’t have worked, and definitely not as well as it did.”
Now, Loki actually laughed, shaking his head. “So you’re saying you healed me with the power of love? I think we’ve surpassed dancing in the Italian streets in terms of saccharine romantic gestures.”
Steve laughed too. “Yeah, I guess we have. But weirdly enough, I’m okay with that.”
“Weirdly enough, so am I. Although…” He paused, and Steve sensed he was looking for words, an unusual situation for Loki. Then: “You were right.”
“About what?”
“About me, about where I came from. I found an entry in Frigga’s journal that said as much…that I’m only half Frost Giant. But she didn’t say what the other half is – it may be in her other books.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it,” Steve noticed.
“Frigga didn’t sound happy about it either. And unless Thor can smuggle the rest of her journals off Asgard, I may never find out what she meant.” Agitation was clear in his voice, bordering on fear – Steve knew, without asking, that it was both fear of never knowing, and fear of finding out.
“We’ll figure it out,” Steve told him gently, threading a hand through his hair. “Don’t forget…you’re not alone. And whatever we find, or don’t find, isn’t going to change that. Whatever DNA you’ve got in there, I’m grateful for it – otherwise you wouldn’t be you. And in case it’s not clear…I love you.”
The tension sighed out of Loki as he spoke. He wrapped one long-fingered hand around Steve’s neck and pulled him into a deliriously deep kiss, one turning into another and another.
They were both exhausted, though, and neither made any serious effort to move farther than kissing. That was fine by Steve – he loved the taste of Loki’s lips, and of course there was that clever tongue that always found new ways to hitch Steve’s breath and make him writhe. Steve had always thought of himself as something of a clumsy kisser, but apparently he was either wrong, or clumsy was just fine, as Loki seemed quite satisfied with his technique. They spent a long and languid hour under the tree, mouths either moving against each other, or speaking in murmurs during the pauses.
The transition back to wakefulness was a gradual one rather than a shock, for once. He closed his eyes and listened to the breath against his ear, and it felt like he rose up from deep water little by little, drifting toward sunlight that, unfortunately, turned out to be the fluorescent overhead lights of the infirmary.
Sighing, he turned his head from one side to the other, getting his bearings and hoping he could see—
The med staff had, in fact, put the two of them in adjacent beds. Steve smiled. Loki was still out; he was even paler than usual, and looked a hundred years younger and older at the same time. As before he looked wildly out of place in a hospital bed…but he was alive, and would stay that way.
On the far side of Loki’s bed Steve could see a blonde head. Thor seemed to sense Steve was awake, and rose. He was smiling, beaming even, and came over.
“Are you well, Captain Rogers?” he asked quietly.
Steve nodded. “I think so. How long was I out?”
“It is midafternoon, so, about twelve hours. Agent Romanov and I have been taking shifts. A great many others have been in and out, just to see if anything else strange happened.”
“What do you mean anything else?”
“Remember what happened when Loki healed you at a distance. This was much more…theatrical? I believe was Fury’s word. Apparently the blast wave hit at least ten people who have all reported chronic and acute medical issues spontaneously vanishing.”
Steve let out a breath he hadn’t intended to hold. Thank God – without any idea how to work the kind of magic he’d worked they were all lucky nothing horrible had happened to them. “Fury…is he angry about all of this? Could you tell?”
“I could not say. I do not think he can either, just yet – perhaps once he grows used to once again being able to see through both eyes.”
Steve gaped at him in astonishment. “Oh.”
Thor merely nodded. He didn’t seem terribly concerned about it. “As soon as I see that Loki is well, I plan to return to Asgard and recover my mother’s remaining journals. I suspect Loki knows places to look.”
“What about your father? He won’t like it.”
Another smile, a bit less sunny but with a definite twist of wryness. “I care not what he thinks,” Thor replied. “It is time we knew the full truth –I want to know exactly what he knew about Loki and for how long. Father adopting him appears to have been cold and calculated, or at least that is how Loki sees it, and at this point I do not blame him. Either the truth will help extinguish his rage toward Odin or it will prove him right all along. Either way…it is time these secrets saw the light of day. And if that means I must stand between my father and my brother, so be it.”
Steve smiled. “You’re a good brother, Thor.”
“I have not been. Not as I should have.”
“He didn’t exactly make it easy for you.”
“True enough. Perhaps knowing the real story might not have changed anything, and perhaps it would have; I believe that Father’s intentions were, at worst, misguided in how he should deal with Loki’s origins, but not malicious or without love. I hope I turn out to be right.”
“Stop talking about me,” came a weak voice.
Steve looked over at the next bed. “Then stop being so interesting.”
Loki favored him with a tired but genuine smile. “It’s really too bad they don’t have double beds here. I could use your human inferno.”
“You’re cold?” Steve asked, surprised. “Is that even possible?”
“When one has lost a good deal of blood, yes.”
Thor nodded to himself and turned from Steve’s bed, moving over to the wall where there were built-in cabinets for medical supplies. He opened a couple before finding a stack of blankets, and removed two.
Steve watched Loki’s face as Thor unfolded and draped one over him, leaving the second on the foot of the bed. Most people wouldn’t have seen the smile – it was there and gone so quickly that Steve might have imagined it…but he knew he hadn’t. He’d gotten used to reading Loki’s mercurial expressions. It was a tolerant smile, but there was something real underneath it that made Steve think of their childhood memories. Maybe there was hope for them after all.
“Is there anything you require, Captain Rogers?” Thor asked.
“No, I’m good, thanks.”
“I will leave you then. I’m sure the two of you could use more rest as much as I.”
Loki was watching Thor keenly as he left, but said nothing. He looked back over at Steve, and frowned. “Are you all right?”
He hadn’t realized he’d been making a face. “Yeah, of course I am. I’m just…trying not to worry about what happens next.”
“You mean with your Avengers and their boss.”
“That and everything else. I’m afraid Fury will kick me out – he’s made his opinions pretty clear. And honestly that wouldn’t be the end of the world…I just don’t know what I would do after that. I don’t know if I can just be a civilian, play house, all that stuff.”
“Easy enough,” Loki replied. “You can come with me, and travel the universe as we have in the dreamtime. There are thousands of places among the stars where a human could breathe. Imagine feeling your feet upon the skin of a different planet every day—the adventures we could have.”
Steve smiled. The idea was attractive. More than attractive, it made his heart feel like it might beat itself to death in his ribcage. “I would like that.”
“Not to mention all the lovely places I could strip you naked and shag you blind.”
Perfect timing – as Loki finished the sentence, Dr. Cho came around the corner with her ubiquitous tablet. She turned bright pink, but pretended not to have heard.
Steve barely – just barely – avoided a fit of laughter at the look on the good doctor’s face. “You’re up late, Doctor,” he said, not quite able to hold back a grin.
“Er…yes, well, Fury asked me to do a thorough comparison of your DNA throughout the last year. He wants me to present my findings when he meets with you tomorrow evening. I can’t really say much more than that.”
“I understand. Sorry to be the reason you’re missing sleep.”
Cho smiled. “On the contrary, Captain – this has been like Christmas for me. I just hope you feel the same way.”
She was gone before Steve could ask her what that meant…but whatever it was, the look on her face sent a ripple of disquiet through Steve’s stomach that kept him from sleeping for quite a while.
*****
“So,” Fury said. “Apparently we have a lot to talk about.”
Loki looked around Fury’s office with interest; it was almost entirely utilitarian, with no personal effects whatsoever. It was just a desk in a room. Did Fury even have a personal life? Had he traded whatever he’d had for life in SHIELD? It seemed a poor bargain, in Loki’s opinion, although he couldn’t really imagine Fury in a normal human occupation like practicing medicine or selling fruit.
Dr. Cho was also there, along with Thor and Romanov. Loki and Steve had been cleared to leave the infirmary – with some reservation on Loki’s part, as there was still a rather ugly gash in his chest sewn up with black thread. Mostly, though, he felt like himself, if a bit dazed by the tumult of events the last few days. He was thankful to at least be dressed like himself again.
Steve took a deep breath. “Director,” he said, “I know this situation isn’t ideal for SHIELD—“
“Hold your horses, Rogers. There are some considerations we need to address first. For one thing: we weren’t able to learn much about what went on between the time Loki stabbed himself and the time you healed him. We know his heart stopped for 121 seconds – was that enough to break the dreamfasting?”
Loki started to answer, but Steve beat him to it. “No sir.”
It was incredibly difficult not to gape at Steve in wide-eye astonishment, but Loki was nothing if not a good actor, so he stayed still.
“He couldn’t break the dreamfasting by dying,” Steve went on. “The books Thor brought back from Asgard confirm that – there is no counterspell.”
Fury narrowed his eyes – both of them, which was completely surreal – and glanced at Thor. “Can you confirm that?”
Thor, too, kept his expression beautifully neutral, and he, too, lied. “Yes. My mother was simply too powerful – her will cannot be bested in this case.”
Natasha spoke next. “I was there in the room while Thor was reading the texts; what he’s telling you is exactly what he told me.”
Loki had never found it so difficult not to smile in his life.
“So,” Steve went on, “Either we have to find a way to work with this where you can trust me to do my job like I always have, or I’ll have to leave. I know that’s not what you want, Nick. There’s got to be a way forward.”
“You could always make me an Avenger,” Loki suggested with a smile.
The aghast looks he got made him chuckle. “A jest, Director Fury. I would be a dreadful superhero – I am far too selfish for your world-saving lifestyle. However, there are ways I could assist the Captain without having to be in the field – you’ve seen that much. He will need to learn to use his abilities more effectively, but after some training, I will be able to increase his power when he needs it – level him up, I think is the phrase.”
Fury leaned his chin on his folded hands. “There’s just one more problem. Dr. Cho?”
She stood, tablet in hand. “The medical staff has been taking samples of both of your blood over the months, whenever they had a chance. Obviously we don’t know a lot about Asgardian DNA…” She cleared her throat and corrected herself. “About Loki’s DNA, I mean. But we were able to sequence it like we would a human’s and at least compare and contrast the different time points. Loki doesn’t seem to have changed…” She actually looked over at Loki and offered a small, nervous smile. “At least not on the genetic level. Captain Rogers, on the other hand…”
She brought up an image on the screen opposite Fury’s desk. It was a pictorial representation of DNA – elegant, he thought.
“This is Steve’s DNA the week before Loki appeared in Stark Tower and all this started. It’s not exactly normal to begin with; he’s artificially Enhanced, you could say. But this next sample was the day he was shot and Loki healed him.”
Loki sat forward slowly, gripping the chair’s arms. “What is that?”
“We don’t really know. By the time we had to lock him in the Zoo, it looked like this.”
Steve made a choking sound. “It’s glowing?”
“Keep in mind this is an illustration – the actual helix doesn’t literally glow, but there’s really no way to accurately visualize it. But yes, that greenish light you see appeared once you started throwing things around in your sleep. I checked periodic samples from your time in the Zoo, and they continued to mutate, but very slowly. Apparently it moves faster when you’re both physically on the same plane. But that’s not the end of it.”
She switched images again. “This is from when you were injured on the rescue mission and Loki transported all of you home. The changes are far more obvious.”
The strand wasn’t just glowing more brightly; there were additional waves in the sample’s architecture, almost a double helix within a double helix. All the new structures fit perfectly in the old, reminding Loki of scaffolding on a building.
That’s not all it reminded him of. Cho caught his eye, and gave him a slight nod, acknowledging that they were on the same page.
“And now?” Loki asked quietly.
She turned back to the screen. “This was last night.”
Everyone in the room made some kind of astonished noise, even Fury, who swore under his breath.
“Is that…am I still human?” Steve asked haltingly. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Cho took a deep breath. “We have.”
She lined a final image up next to the one of Steve’s DNA. While not totally identical, the resemblance was far too strong to be anything like a coincidence.
“We took this one yesterday.”
Steve drew his eyes slowly from left to right and left again, from the names on the images, up to their uncanny similarity.
Left side: Steven Rogers.
Right side: Thor.
“I do not understand,” Thor said, echoing the entire room’s feelings. “Why would the dreamfasting change the Captain like this?”
“Immortality,” Steve said. He sounded matter-of-fact, but his voice was brittle, as if he were trying not to feel anything and risk being overwhelmed by everything. “What good does a spell like that do Loki if I get old and die? He either has to die hundreds of years before he should or I have to live hundreds of years longer than I should. If I were Frigga I know which one I’d pick.”
Romanov stared at the images with a crinkled nose. It was impossible to tell how she felt about the idea, but she was thinking it through logically, as they were all at least trying to. “All right, that makes reasonable sense, but why not make Steve’s DNA mimic Loki’s?”
Loki felt them all staring at him without wanting to look like they were staring. They were all thinking it – and they were all correct.
“Because of what I am,” he said softly. “I do not know if such mutations are part of the dreamfasting itself, but Frigga was powerful enough to alter the spell. Either she changed the spell to echo her own bloodline instead of mine, or she added the entire concept and chose hers to begin with. Either way the reasoning is obvious – the Frost Giants are monsters. We were told horror stories about them as children. There was deep and lasting enmity between the two Realms; Odin’s truce with Laufey was an uneasy and resentful one. Who would force such a thing on an innocent human if there was no alternative? At least her own people look mostly human without having to bespell themselves. And that’s without considering what else I might be.”
“What else you might be?” Fury asked.
Thor took up the thread reluctantly. “We discovered references in Mother’s journal that suggested Loki might not be full-blooded Frost Giant…and whatever his other half is, she feared to speak of it. I hope to find out more upon my return to Asgard.”
“She knew the truth, all of it. She wanted you to save me,” Loki told Steve. “But that didn’t mean she wanted you to be like me.”
“We can’t know that for sure,” Steve replied gently. “There might have been a totally logical reason – maybe some kind of genetic compatibility issue.”
“Regardless,” Fury cut in, “This isn’t something we can ignore. We don’t know how far it’s going to…” He fell silent, looking up at Cho.
“Sir,” she said, “I’m afraid there’s no doubt in my mind how far this will go. The changes are continuing, and are reaching a tipping point. They haven’t been steady so it’s difficult to assign a timeline, but the best estimate I can give you is six months.”
“Six months until what?” Steve asked. His eyes darted over to Loki, who looked away. They both knew the answer. It was a consequence of the dreamfasting Loki could never have predicted, or even imagined; as far as he knew there was no precedent. Whatever the fallout, wherever it led, there was one thing they all knew now, one thing staring them in the face.
Within six months, Captain America would be Asgardian.