8. Shards of Change

. . .

"Aw, you snuck in a near-sex scene. And kinda skipped yourself." Daisy smirked at him with those tired eyes, her hands knotted together as she still leaned forward. She looked more content with the pomp of a royal wedding as a finale to the story, at least. Loki hoped that would be good enough.

He frowned, though, still unable to avoid some discomfort with the related topics. "Well, as stated, they had their true-born son. How he got there is a matter of some foregone conclusion that I should hope I have no need to explain to you."

"I got the birds and the bees talk a hella while back, you're good." He rolled his eyes and she giggled at him, a trace of old times in that laugh. "You don't really want to get into the rest of the stuff."

"Don't really, no." He clasped his hands and interlaced the fingers like a professor, resting them on one crossed knee as he looked at her. She was fully out of her shell for him, at least for now, but the scars were not going to leave. It wasn't his job to heal them for her. There was no way he could. "They had many, many good years. I find it fortunate I'm part of some of them." The corners of his mouth deepened. "And yet there I am, amidst some of the worst, too."

"But they change."

"They do, Daisy. The shards of all our relationships change us, fallen by the good wind and the ill. And when the person is gone, the changes remain. That's how we find other little pieces of ourselves, the things in us we didn't understand." He sighed. She'd heard what she could. The rest was up to her. "There's not much left to say, except the blunt. If you run, know the difference between running from something and running to something. It's subtle, but it matters."

She bowed her head, her face disappearing within the dark veil of her short hair one more time. "Coulson won't like that you said that. I don't think it's what he wanted when he talked to you."

"And as I told you at the outset, what I'm told to do and what I actually do are not always coincident. Further again, we must allow that I have regrettable more experience in this. I'll worry about Coulson. You must find out how to care for yourself."

She sat in silence for a while, her hands still working against each other in thought. At least she'd stopped tearing up one of his throw pillows. "Were you ever in love?"

Loki realized the question surprised him. Deeply. It took him a moment to decide how to answer, and as usual, he went for deflection first. A delay at least. "How do you mean?"

Her voice was dry. "You know what I mean, dude."

He allowed a laugh, near as low and wry as her words. "Relationships, lovers… well, yes. The ridiculous fracas with Lorelei and Amora was proof enough of that much normalcy, and proof that Karnilla's long tale had an ending after all. Just not one I'll tell today." He looked away. "Enough proof that I whiffed there a bit. Typical, I suppose."

She said it again, not dry this time. Just quiet. "You know what I mean."

Loki leaned back. For his friends, he found himself too often trapped in honesty. He'd given them too much terrain to approach, and it was harder to lie to them. Himself, well, that was still easier. But for her, the truth, then. He wasn't sad, at least he didn't think so. He spoke matter of factly. "No. Sometimes I think that much is not meant for me."

To her credit, and probably also due to her recent experience, she let him go after that with a small nod. "Okay. So." She took an inhale and rubbed feeling back into legs that had been sitting too long, ready to get up. "I got a bunch of things to think about."

He stood up first, the door of his rooms opening untouched with a flick of his fingers. "So you do. If you want to speak of anything else, that door will be opened." He looked down at himself, nearly forgetting. He patted at his pocket, then pulled a small device out. He passed it to her when she looked at him, surprised. "And one more thing. Should you run. That will not track you, you have not only my word but my oath. But if you need, whether it be help or just a voice, you can use that. I'll hear."

"Is it magic?" Daisy turned it over in her hand as she stood. It was a simple version, a slender black device that would pass as a burner phone in a pinch even though it had no maker's label. No trouble to figure out.

"It's something Rocket can make, the little mammal you met once. Better even than the crystals we used before. That one is tied only to another device I alone hold. And before you wonder, he doesn't have a backdoor line on it. Both I and Groot made sure of that." One towering giant wearing a paler prince's face, one grumbly and protective tree. Rocket had flung up his furry hands and sworn to be exploded if he got cute with his own gadgets at the cost of someone else's privacy.

She looked up at him with a smile, a real one. "Thanks." Then her face creased again. "Can I ask a favor that's going to be really hard and probably weird?"

Already wary after a question he should have expected and didn't, Loki braced himself. "You can ask."

"I want a hug. I kinda blew up on Mack when he hugged me, it's like, I should have done better for him." She sniffled, keeping it under control as best she could. "Because even if I run, it's not because I hate any of you."

Startled into a laugh, he hesitated for a moment. Then he stretched one arm out, allowing her to come into his side for a stiff but genuine hug. He looked down at her with her hair under his chin. "It will be better, Daisy. Just not today."

. . .

Frigga sighed as the baby in her arms murmured softly to her. She looked down at the boy, still tiny enough to be dangerously fragile, then back to her husband, the King and All-Father as he paced the quarters they shared most years. There were separate towers for other times; not for lack of love, but for the simple privacy long and royal lives needed. But with young children between them at last, they found they usually liked this quiet time together.

Right now, however, his tension filled the air like smoke. She tried to clear it. "The war is won, my love. It cost a king, it cost several millennia of our lives, it cost your eye, and it cost half their own resources. They will not break the peace this time. If you must consider pressing further, I say force the jotun king to be torn down and put his imprisoned wife in his place. She's a wiser sort, I heard." She looked down at the baby, finding herself smiling as he cooed back up. Fat little fingers and bright gleaming eyes.

Odin glanced at her and then at the child and she realized she couldn't read his expression as he looked into eyes that were a pretty green mixed with grey, eyes that hid a strange and jewel-like red. "It's not a risk I feel we can take. And if they so much as grumble, I'm prepared to draw my spear once more." He shook his head, that stubborn thing in him coming out stronger and harder as the years drew on. "This isn't peace, Frigga, it's a detente with a race that loathes us. I must consider our future with them."

Race, he said. She heard in it that other word he liked to use for that people. Monsters. Now with this new child in her arms, she realized she hated both the words when they meant the same thing and spat the old fire at him. "You learned to see us witches as more once. You learned to see me, see us as a mirror of what the warriors are. Do not the jotun warrant some of that same introspection?"

"They are beastlier, Frigga." The hard thing in him, cut with an older king's worry. Bor's real legacy come forth after all. Not a berserker, her love, but the stoic fear of the future instead. He didn't look at the baby as he spoke to her.

"Are they?" She said it carefully. Not all knives were held in hidden sheathes at her waist. She lifted the baby in her arms so her husband had no choice but to see little Loki if he wanted to look at her again. Whether blue or Asgardian pale, the cast of his features would be the same to her. "Or are they as full of flaw and potential as we?"

So trapped, he looked back at his wife of many centuries. He looked at her with his one good eye and found hers with the same trust and love and occasional deep exasperation. Then they went to the eyes of the son he chose to adopt with the future's fears in his tactical mind, and there was the old and troubled look under a furrowed brow. He could say nothing to her words, which is how she knew she had the truth of it.

Perhaps in time Odin would gentle again. As the child grew and became whoever he might be. When he turned away, Frigga curled the baby closer, giving him a smile that was returned with a wet gurgle. "Mother?" she heard behind her, in that high and young voice. "And Father."

Sweet Thor. Doting and easy, but already more Odin's son even at this age. Or Great-Grandfather Buri, perhaps - there was a little bit of fire in the boy, and there the berserker might come out in time. They both turned to Thor as he bowed while holding the hand of one of the nurses, barely out of his toddling. Loki would match him quickly, being only a few years younger. "I'm sorry. I asked the nurse if I could come and see my brother." Freed of the amused nurse, his little hands stretched towards Frigga with an eagerness that made her feel better.

Odin still said nothing. So Frigga knelt and beckoned her son closer. "Will you take him to his crib for me, little prince?"

"I will!" He beamed up, delighted at the responsibility.

"You mustn't drop him."

"I'll never!" Even in Thor's still-pudgy arms, the baby looked smaller than most. But true to his word, Thor held his little brother closer as they smiled at each other for the first time. He looked up at Frigga. "Thank you, mother!"

"And thank you. Rest well, children. I love you both."

Still Odin said nothing, and his face remained troubled for some hours. So it would be. Frigga didn't love him any less for it. They had time enough for all things, and she would be there to help ease those worries when he was ready for it.

In this, she had complete faith.

. . .

"She's going to run."

Loki looked up from where he lounged to see Phil Coulson's back still turned to him. He could see his friend's hands, though, and they were clasped tightly together. The fake flesh was digging white into his real fingers, but Phil didn't seem to notice. "Yes. She is." He sat up in the soft leather chair, pitching his voice more strongly. "And since she doesn't need the advice I could give any longer, I'll pass it to you instead. Let her go. No cages, Phil. They don't work. She needs to find her feet, and in time they may well take her back in this direction. She knows who and where her friends are, though I'm sure I can't keep you from watching. If she doesn't return, however, it won't be because she's the one that changed."

Coulson took that in as he stared out the window of the Director's office. "I think it's gonna get worse around here before it gets better, you know that? How does that even happen, the years we've had?" He turned to look at his friend and knocked his cybernetic hand against the thick sheaf of official documents. "The things we've fought, and I still didn't think it was going to get like this."

Loki glanced at the cover. The Sokovia Accords, signed and passed into international law. Yes, he had read them. There were a number of implications in their pages he thought deeply worrisome, and not only for his own skin while he chose to live on Earth. There had already been consequences, and those were plain on Phil's face, too. There were going to be more. Changes he couldn't yet predict. Loki reached across the table to the thick bottle of scotch. He thunked it atop the file in an obvious insult to the words inside, then clinked two glasses together before he poured a measure out for each of them. He took his with a salute, smiling grimly.

The small drama gave Phil his own smile back and he picked up his glass. "So, are you going to stay?"

The scotch went down with a pleasant burn and Loki poured himself another shot. "Bitter irony should I survive Thanos and fall to some mortal bureaucracy instead." He drained it without a wince, grinning a little as Phil tried to do the same and ate a cough for his own ego's sake. "I will stay and see what comes."

He was touched to see that gave his friend some comfort, then frowned as something buzzed in his pocket. Loki pulled out a small black device nearly identical to the one he'd given away earlier, then frowned more deeply when he read the words on its screen.

Phil reached out for the bottle. "What's up? That's not your phone."

"No," said Loki, scrolling through the information that had been sent to him. "A message from Rocket, that reprobate of both our acquaintance." He looked up, bemused. "Seems he's up to something malignantly stupid and thinks it's wise he calls to me for advice."

"Oh, he's boned." Phil laughed and gulped a shot.

Loki laughed as well, enjoying a moment of genuine merriment. "Yes, I suspect he is."

"You need to go?"

"Nothing I can do to personally pull his tail out of whatever fire he's stuck it in." Loki shoved the device into his pocket again, then took the entire bottle once he put the cap back on it. He stood up. "But if you'll excuse me, I'm going to steal your liquor and see if I can think of some word to help his issue on short notice."

"Does it ever stop being so goddamn weird around here?"

"By all the gods, Phil, I should hope not." Loki wave the bottle in a mock salute and let himself out the door. He called the last back over his shoulder, catching a quick glimpse of his friend's tired grin. "It's better this way, really. I would hate to be bored for long."

The door to Phil's office shut with a snap of the lock.

Somewhere else, another door opened and Daisy ran out.

~Fin

. . .

The world is always ending, for someone.

~Neil Gaiman, Signal to Noise

. . .

May 25, 2016. All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. Loki is a little bastard with too much to say.

. . .

Note:

Rocket and Groot will eventually return, up to something malignantly stupid.