persephone_kore

Title: A Tale of Two Lokis
Authors: Khilari and Persephone_Kore
Summary: Thor and Loki were not the first of Odin's loved ones to bear those names. After the events of the movie, Loki is planning his next moves when he discovers a frost giant imprisoned in a volcano, who proves to be both the uncle he was named for and Laufey's first child. Soon Loki has a new mentor, Asgard is shaking off isolationist tendencies, Jotunheim is receiving foreign aid, and Earth is suddenly and vividly reacquainted with the existence of aliens....
Authors' Note: We were partially inspired by some of the theories proposed on the TV Tropes WMG page for the movie. We have taken the movie and combined it with the Eddas, the Gesta Danorum, and bits and pieces from other Marvel sources. We're having a lot of fun with it and hope you enjoy the result.

Chapter 4

Loki’s first explorations into extradimensional space had been cautious, staying close enough to Asgard to jump straight back out if necessary. But he was sure that staying close to Vanaheim would only get him caught, they had falconskins and would not find it hard to search, so he set off warily past their moons and into the darkness. He knew how to do this, had found his way from Asgard to Jotunheim and Midgard by feeling his way like this; senses tingling as he expanded his awareness so as to sense any danger. Not, previously, so fast though.

The creature came at him unexpectedly. The large ones he had always found easy to avoid, the small ones he had to pick his way around and this time he had been too careless. It had a body like a winding, rippling sheet and approached him with curiosity rather than malice. It was not the first time Loki had had encounters like this. Once they’d seen you they were normally too fast to run from but, although it made his mind ache, he could normally overpower them and send them away.

One trailing end flicked out, slipping up his chest and over his face as Loki braced himself. He pushed at it but, while before it had been a struggle, this time it was like pushing on quicksand. No, he was the quicksand, the creature was quite solid. It was his mind that was losing shape in the struggle, strange wavering shapes flickering across his vision and the sudden taste of mead, too vivid a sense memory, on his tongue.

‘Loki. I am Loki,’ he told it, but the creature wanted to know who that was and only pushed deeper.

Loki could no longer see what was around him, it was all blackness and violent jabs of light that were gone as soon as they appeared. More frightening, from what he knew of his previous trips, he could no longer see himself. He tasted salt and smelt oranges, the combination almost enough to make him gag.

Something grabbed him. The creature withdrew from his mind with a shocked disappointment, like a puppy that had just been slapped. Loki couldn’t tell what was holding him, it felt like arms but heatless, only that it didn’t seem to be continuing the assault on his mind. Stories bubbled up in his mind, tales of Hel who stalks between worlds grabbing men and carrying them away. No one knew where she took them, but they were never seen again.

Loki kicked out, trying to struggle. He tried summoning the casket but his mind couldn’t hold the spell. They were travelling, he could tell that, the minds of the creatures they passed like acid on his raw mind. He panicked, biting at his captor even though that had no hope of working against Hel.

They suddenly emerged from extradimensional space. The darkness didn’t change, but there was a solid floor under Loki’s feet. The sound of traffic outside told him what world he was on and he felt dizzy with relief, the arms still circling him were practically holding him up.

‘What? Lopt?’ he said.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ said Lopt. ‘Calm down.’

‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’

‘I couldn’t.’

Oh, yes, Loki had made him be quiet during the confrontation with Thor. ‘It’s done something to my eyes,’ said Loki. ‘I can’t see.’

‘Your eyes are fine,’ said Lopt. ‘It’s done something to your perceptions.’

‘And how is that better?’

‘Because it’s temporary,’ said Lopt. He gently tugged Loki over a few paces. ‘There’s a chair here. Sit down.’

Loki did as he was told for the moment, letting his scattered thoughts pull themselves together. ‘Is this my apartment?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Lopt.

‘Then we can’t stay here. Your wife knows where it is and she’s with Thor.’

‘Ah,’ said Lopt. ‘It hasn’t done any damage to your ability to think. At least that’s reassuring. Where do you want to go?’

‘A hotel,’ said Loki. ‘For now. You’ll have to pack my things. Quickly.’

‘I can do that,’ said Lopt. Loki could hear that he’d moved away slightly, to the kitchen. He was opening doors in there. ‘But what’s a hotel?’

‘An...inn? A place where people pay to spend the night.’

‘The last time I was on Midgard, in the place Odin and I were frequenting, the mortals would rather have cut their hands off than charged money for hospitality. Of course, in that climate, leaving someone outdoors overnight meant finding his frozen corpse in the morning as often as not. Here, drink this.’ He had been moving back towards Loki as he spoke, and now Loki found a glass pushed into his hands.

Loki sipped at it. Absinthe, which was about what he expected since it was from his cupboard. Clearly Lopt had no idea it was normally diluted but Loki wasn’t going to complain about a strong drink right now. At least it burnt away some of the shock.

Lopt was moving around the apartment, gathering things to pack, and, Loki suspected, being deliberately noisy about it. ‘Do you have mortal coin?’ he called.

‘I have a credit card,’ said Loki, then sighed. ‘I’ll explain later. Just leave paying to me.’

Getting a taxi and a hotel to direct it to required Lopt reading to him from the phone book without actually understanding it and was an exercise in frustration. Fortunately, once they had that sorted out the actual trip to the hotel went smoothly and it wasn’t long before they were installed in a two-bedroom suite. Loki sat down on one of the beds and yawned, crawling straight into it was looking like a tempting option right now.

‘Don’t fall asleep yet,’ said Lopt.

Loki blinked, strange to feel himself blinking and still see only darkness. ‘Why, is it dangerous?’

‘It won’t do you any harm. But I’ve fallen asleep in the aftermath of a wolf attack and it wasn’t pleasant.’

That was almost reassuring, that he wasn’t the only one stupid enough to have something like this happen to him. Then he caught up with what Lopt had called it. ‘A wolf?’

‘Odin and I used to call most of the minor ones wolves at one point.’

‘Wolves?’ Loki was still incredulous. The ones like leeches, or tangles of weed, could still be called wolves?

Lopt laughed. ‘It was sort of a joke. This was after we’d found Midgard and we had friends there. A lot of our time with them was spent sharing fireside stories of trouble we’d got ourselves into or out of. The nature of what we’d been in trouble with usually wasn’t the point of the story and took far too long to explain. After a while a lot of our stories started with “Between worlds there is a dark wood full of hungry wolves, and the two of us were walking there when…” The name stuck.’

‘Possibly I should blame you for getting them started on kennings,’ said Loki. ‘When Odin took us to Midgard as children, Thor begged to be taken to see the carnivorous reindeer in the mountains. It took Father a while to realise he’d heard a kenning for wolves and longer still to explain it.’ Loki didn’t add that he’d been just as confused, and just as eager to see this strange new species of reindeer.

Lopt took a while to recover this time, he was laughing so hard. ‘They already had kennings when we arrived. They generally kept them within the bounds of reason though.’ There was a moment and then Lopt said, ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Yes,’ said Loki, surprised to find that he was. ‘You can get food by telephone, like the taxi. Try to find a place that does pizza.’

Lopt did rather better with the pizza than the taxi, he was a quick learner even if he’d been in the modern world for only a couple of days. Less, really, with all the travelling they’d done.

‘I’d run into those things before,’ said Loki quietly, after he heard the click of the receiver being replaced. ‘I’d never been overwhelmed by one before.’

‘Before you found out you were a frost giant?’ said Lopt.

Loki winced. ‘Yes.’

‘Identity’s a better defense against most of them than magic. Thor, my Thor, could never talk to them but they couldn’t do much to him either. He had a sense of self like a force-field and they just bounced off. My daughter, Leikin, was very sensitive to them but caught between two races in a number of ways. It was a while before she had a firm enough identity to risk facing them. But, if it’s any help, these things often come with age.’

‘I need to travel,’ said Loki. ‘I can’t just wait and hope things get better.’

‘You have the casket. We have a falconskin. There’s no need to dive into the void unprotected.’

‘We do?’ said Loki. He’d been thinking the whole trip had been a failure.

‘I needed to come after you quickly. So, yes, we do.’

Loki blinked, his vision was starting to come back. He could see the ginger blur of Lopt’s hair. ‘Falconskins can carry two people? Or did you stop using it once you had me?’

‘They can carry two people, at a pinch. I carried Idunn in one once. It’s not recommended, it makes them less maneuverable for a start. But I’ve never crashed a falconskin yet. And it’s more recommended than trying to travel without one with someone who’s already injured.’

They were like predators, then, or so Lopt was implying. They would be drawn to attack someone already wounded. ‘Was it trying to eat me?’

‘No. Some of them do, but that one was…being friendly. Like a big clumsy dog trying to make friends with a canary.’

‘You said you’d been caught by some of them before,’ said Loki. ‘What happened?’

‘I managed to push some off with effort. Other times Odin rescued me. And then yelled at me. I’ve been rescued by Sigyn a time or two as well, that involves less yelling generally.’

They were interrupted by the telephone ringing, which turned out to be a call from reception saying their pizza had arrived. That probably explained why Lopt was still glamoured. Loki gave him some cash (he did have some, just not enough for a hotel) and sent him down to pay for it.

'Too wilting slow,' Freya snarled on the way back into the central communications office. Thor had arranged payment for the falconskin, and his hand had been treated. The one severe case of frostbite was still being looked after.

'Language,' said one of the monitors a bit diffidently. He gestured at Jane as she sat up from a cushioned bench. Thor remembered they had caught her in the middle of her night; probably the nap had been sensible. He sighed and went over to sit beside her, answering her questioning look with a shake of his head. She frowned down at his bandaged hand.

Freya rolled her eyes. 'That's barely 'language', and anyway, she's a human, not a child.'

'What happened?' Jane asked.

'We waited to see if Thor could persuade him,' Freya said, 'and didn't close in fast enough when that didn't work. I tried to block Prince Loki's ability to travel, but I think it only jostled him into a bad start. Sigyn's Loki went to help him. And I thought he was difficult to babysit before.'

'It's probably easier when you don't have to obey him,' Sigyn said dryly.

'Babysitting?' Jane asked in an undertone.

Thor cast his gaze briefly to the ceiling and wondered if it was comforting that Freya's talent for embarrassing him hadn't changed. 'Not really,' he said, 'or not much. But we do -- did --' He stopped and tried again for a less painfully definitive verb tense. 'Loki and I have visited her children a good deal, and I suppose the combination may have been something of a handful. At times.'

'I don't suppose you can track them?' Freya was asking Sigyn.

Sigyn grimaced and shook her head. 'Maybe if I'd tried to follow immediately, but I've been from Asgard to Midgard to here unassisted this morning, with passengers. I am really in no condition to go chasing people right now.'

Freya blinked. 'And then you decided to go up against ice magic thrown with the Jotun casket. That does it. I'll take you all back to Asgard, and we can try to sort the rest out from there.'

Sigyn acquiesced. Freya equipped them all for the journey with elegant necklaces like the ones the shop had sold, which Thor thought probably looked a great deal better on the women than on him. The gold looked and felt smooth until Freya fastened it, at which point there was an odd furry, buzzing feeling, as if he were holding a bee. Jane ran a finger under hers, looking intent.

'I'm mostly controlling all of these,' Freya told them. 'You'll have some freedom of movement, but not a lot. Now.'

The extradimensional dark swallowed them up at the same time as the falconskins leapt to life around them, sleek shapes that looked a bit like the solid parts of the Bifrost, but in iridescent green-bronze. The sensation was a bit more like flying with Mjolnir than the trips with Sigyn, but Thor still felt himself swooping after Freya without consciously willing it.

It wasn't a completely smooth trip, but Freya seemed to be exerting less effort than Sigyn had. Presumably that was what the falconskins were for. The few things Freya didn't dodge mostly glanced off them without effect. Still, they all nearly mired in something like bindweed, or maybe like an excited octopus, right before Freya brought them out. The poor monitor would have been scandalised; they all got to hear what Freya did consider profanity as Thor made quick work of the tendrils that came through with them. She didn't shut the falconskins off until afterward; considering the corroded marks the tendrils left on the ground, this was probably just as well.

'You do have a scavenger problem,' Freya said with distaste.

'I told you that,' said Sigyn.

'So you did.' Freya stretched. 'Very well. I think you and Jane need a nap, and Odin will probably want an update. Come along, Thor.'

'I know where we're going,' Thor said dryly. 'I do live here.'

'Then guide us, my host,' she returned. In a softened tone, she added, 'I can't imagine you'll enjoy the conversation. We might as well get it over with.'

The boy slept on his side, curled around himself defensively, but didn’t appear to be distressed. His vision had returned earlier and he seemed shaken but otherwise unharmed by the encounter. Loki checked on him one last time and then stepped into extradimensional space, activating the falconskin as he did.

Loki had always loved the falconskins. They were slower than the Bifrost but felt faster, as he jinked and swerved around dangers, just losing himself in the moment and enjoying the rush of flight. It was almost a shame to reach Asgard and he took a path through the forest of scavengers that required a lot of weaving just for the thrill of it, although he would have scolded any of his children who tried to do the same. He landed outside the palace and quickly veiled himself in invisibility before setting out for Odin’s study.

Odin was there, reading something and frowning. Loki stepped forward and dropped the invisibility. The glamour had been dropped earlier and he faced Odin looking just as he had when they first met, save for the bands of runes on his skin. Odin’s eye skimmed over them and his frown deepened.

‘Aren’t you going to welcome me home, brother?’ said Loki.

Odin's gaze snapped sharply up to Loki's eyes, and after a few seconds he rose and came toward him. 'Yes,' he said. 'Though I wasn't expecting to see you here.' He extended a hand, the one he'd cut long ago for a ceremony Loki had proposed. They hadn't worked out most of the protections against the temperature difference then; Odin's blood had been blistering hot, and his skin had frozen and crackled against Loki's.

Loki took his hand, clasping it easily. They hadn't touched while he'd been imprisoned. 'I thought we needed to talk,' he said.

'I misjudged you,' said Odin.

'As I did you,' said Loki. 'I took your side against the frost giants because you wished to protect Midgard for the mortals. When it seemed you had only wanted it for yourself I thought you had betrayed me. But Midgard is fine. Currently.'

'I have heard it may need protection again,' Odin said, looking weary. His eye flicked back to the runes on Loki's skin, and they itched lightly -- a precursor to pain if Odin tried harder to break them. The sensation faded. 'I suspect you are providing that, regardless of what he's told you to do.'

'I can't discuss his plans. I'm bound not to go against them, and telling you would probably amount to that. I came here to mend things between us.' He paused. 'I suppose his brother told you about what happened earlier. Some of the things he said sounded like things I might have said to you, at the end.'

Odin nodded slightly at the first words; probably he had expected the restriction. 'It's unsettling to think that Thor was less rash in his replies.' A pause. 'I have missed you, Loki.' Rare words, from him.

'And I you.' Loki pulled them together by their clasped hands for a brief embrace. Odin was not normally demonstrative but he did hug back. 'I've been getting quite nostalgic, trying to catch your son up on all the history he's somehow missed. Whatever did you teach him?'

Odin withdrew with a slight grimace. 'Evidently not nearly enough. I let him and Thor guide much of their own educations.'

'Forgetting that not everyone would take such determined advantage of that as you did?' said Loki. 'I was beginning to think something had gone so wrong in the war with Jotunheim that you had deliberately suppressed all evidence of the former alliance.'

Odin actually looked startled. 'The end of it was a foul enough business, but no. Never that.'

Loki nodded. 'Perhaps if the boy had had a better idea of his own nature he would have taken more interest in history.' He glanced at Odin, considering. 'Did he really try to destroy Jotunheim?'

Odin's breath hissed out. 'Using the Bifrost,' he confirmed. 'Thor broke it to stop him.' A pause, then, 'Please don't kill him.'

Loki shook his head. 'It took him a day to think of it, but he did bind me not to.' He looked at Odin's face and snorted. 'I won't. Truly.'

'Thank you.' A long sigh, another glance at the runes. 'Are you well? It's become apparent I don't know what to expect from him.'

Loki sighed. 'Restricted. Although from a practical point of view there may be advantages to this, when it comes to influencing your son into saner courses. He would never let anyone close to him if he didn't have power over them. And he's started thinking of me as more of a person since seeing me glamoured - which is deeply disturbing given his nature.'

Odin shook his head. Dismay, not denial, not after the discussion of Jotunheim. 'I set spells deeper than glamours into him,' he said, 'when I feared a Jotun infant wouldn't survive Asgard's summer, and -- when I was waiting for tempers to cool. I thought it unfair to make an illustration of a child. And then....' His expression couldn't really be called a smile. 'Instead of finding a time to explain, I waited for him to ask questions.'

And the child had been left with nothing to ask. At most a vague feeling of difference. 'How did you come to have him?' asked Loki. 'He said he had mostly been raised by you, but you had him as an infant?'

'I found him,' Odin said, 'when the last battle of the war was over, alone among the rubble of the temple. I had not expected--' He broke off, then resumed with less anger in his voice. 'And I saw Laufey's features in him, and yours.'

Loki nodded. He remembered the temple exposures. The traditional words ran through his head, Angrboda, take back this child. I cannot rear it. It had been both a last resort of the desperate and a sanctioned way for the uncaring to destroy runts. Evidently Laufey had decided against raising a second runt, although the first had made himself scarce as soon as physically able and never troubled him again.

'And you told him that,' he said. 'All that waiting for the right time to mention he was a frost giant and you flat out told him his parent wanted him dead. Wise All-father, your priorities are terrible.'

Odin didn't look away. 'I told him he was mine,' he said softly, 'but I did not tell him nearly enough.'

Loki pressed his palms against his eyes for a moment. 'If I had been here...perhaps it could have made a difference, seeing that a frost giant can live among the Asgardians.'

A low snort. 'And you would not have put up with the silence.' Odin paused, then grimaced. 'This is also a terrible time to tell you, but I am not sure a better one will come. Loki, Laufey is dead.'

Loki paused, shocked but hardly dismayed. 'The boy killed him,' he said, starting to smile despite himself.

Odin inclined his head slightly, without lowering his gaze. 'Laufey seemed to expect to be permitted to kill me as I slept.'

'Laufey knows as much about the ways between worlds as an earthworm knows about flying,' said Loki. 'Oh. What was the boy planning with that?'

'I haven't had the opportunity to ask him -- but possibly an excuse.'

'Perhaps,' said Loki. 'Very dramatic of him, to kill one father over the sleeping body of the other.'

'The whole thing had a very stage-managed quality. Even Thor's return, but I'm not sure why or how he would have orchestrated that.'

'Hmm. He's inherited your penchant for convoluted plans, it seems.'

'And even less inclination to run them past anyone first,' Odin said ruefully.

Loki grinned, bright and sudden. 'You ran them by me often enough. And all that did was land both of us in trouble instead of one.'

'You did improve on them now and then,' Odin said. 'Of course, sometimes the improvement was an opportunity for more trouble....'

Loki smiled at his old conspirator and then sighed. 'I had better go. If he wakes up and finds me gone then this will be the last trip I manage. Give Sigyn all my love and tell your son...tell Thor...that he reminds me of his namesake and that I am glad to see Mjolnir in good hands.' A humorously accusing look at Odin. 'Especially after what I paid for it.'

'I will," Odin said. He smiled back, very slightly. 'He has heard that story, at least.'

'Nice to know I haven't been forgotten,' said Loki. 'Goodbye, brother.'

He stepped once more into extradimensional space, the falconskin flaring to life around him.