Note: In which the heavy artillery arrive to assist, and we bring this adventure to a close. (I have no idea what I was thinking here, but it seemed like the best way to end this.)

Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading this story, it's been tremendous fun hearing from you!

ChapterSixteen

Loki, Steve, and Coulson turned toward the source of the voice. Walking toward them was a very slender, very young man, dressed in what might best be described as some modern human's idea of the garb of a medieval peasant or servant. His standards of personal hygiene appeared to be modern as well: dark hair clean and neatly trimmed around his prominent ears, bony face clear-skinned, blue eyes bright and ready to sparkle with mischief.

Coulson and Steve looked him over, and Coulson was the one who asked the question:

"Who are you?"

The newcomer looked expectantly at Loki, who could feel his face heat up. Apparently, this was his fault.

"Steve, Mr. Coulson, may I present Merlin," Loki said briefly.

"Coulson's fine," the agent said, extending a hand. Merlin shook it. Steve followed suit, unable to stop himself from remarking,

"I thought you'd be- "

"Older?" Merlin asked, with a smile. "I do age backwards, after all. Really, though, your friend here has the most to do with it: I'm letting his expectations influence my appearance to you, and he doesn't seem to be well-versed in Arthurian mythology." At the uncomprehending looks on the two faces, Merlin said gently, "Apparently, there's a television program." He glanced at Loki and added, "I'm grateful, really. I spent centuries appearing to people as an old man with a beard and pointy hat. It's quite nice, really, not having any aches or pains."

Merlin turned toward Mordred, and his smile disappeared. "And now, it's time to do something about you." Loki was struck with a sudden pang of anxiety, but Merlin's expression was kind. "Morgan's idea, to let him see how the realm has gotten along without him, without Arthur, without the Round Table- that was a good one, or at least it would have been if he'd been a little more concerned about the realm. Morgan's vision is outward, so she doesn't always realize how much more concerned most creatures are with what goes on inside them." Merlin glanced at Loki, whose face was now very hot indeed, and said gently, "It's fortunate you were here as well."

Yes, well, if someone was needed who understood festering and brooding, Loki was indeed your sorcerer. As nothing apparently needed to be said, Loki said nothing, merely waited for Merlin to speak again.

"I'm not quite sure he understands that rulers are transient," Merlin remarked thoughtfully. "It's understandable: in his lifetime, there was only ever one king, his father, and Mordred was always in too much pain to be particularly capable of considering the situation objectively. Mordred," he now addressed the other- man? Apparition?- directly. "Mordred, I need to show you something."

Mordred, who had been staring at the ground, looked up, his expression of hopeless misery painful to behold. Loki, watching, remembered his own fall into the dustbins behind the little house in Totterdown. Although he had not known it at the time, both a cleansing charm and a protective spell had fallen with him, causing him to land in a place where the help he needed would be forthcoming, in an emotional state that allowed him to recognize and accept it. If that had not been the case, he might have been as badly off as Mordred: possibly just as dangerously angry, certainly as sick with misery.

Loki, though again he had not known it at the time, had not been nearly as abandoned as he thought himself to be. If TH White was to be believed, Mordred really was. Loki found himself looking at Merlin with what he knew to be a childish sensation of hope. If Merlin could get through to Mordred, if he would go back willingly to where he belonged, if anything could be done to comfort him...

Behind Merlin, a figure appeared. Loki had been rather expecting the young, blond, handsome Arthur from the same television series as his vision of Merlin- an Arthur quite driven from his mind by TheCandleIntheWind. This man was not Arthur, was a stranger to Loki, his garb even more primitive than Mordred's. He was followed by another, and then a third, and finally Loki realized what Merlin was showing them: it was a parade of all the monarchs who had preceded and followed Arthur, all the rulers of England throughout the centuries.

Loki actually found the procession extremely interesting on its own merits- like Mordred, he too had only lived under the rule of a single king, his father, and he too had given little thought to those who might have come before. The lifespan of the Aesir was rather different from that of a human, of course: during the span being shown to Mordred, Odin had in fact been the only king of Asgard. That was not the case here on Midgard: the procession seemed endless, the kings varied in age and increasingly gorgeously arrayed, some of them really striking, like the massive blond-bearded king who limped on a gouty leg, looking like Thor grown old, run to seed, and having lost his good nature.

He was preceded by a thin-faced man with a miserly, watchful air, and a small, wary-looking one with dark hair, all three of them eying each other with equal suspicion. Indeed, suspicion seemed to be a feature of the expressions of many of the kings. It occurred to Loki that, of course, the throne had probably, more than once, changed hands through warfare. The later monarchs appeared far less mutually hostile, and several of them bore striking family resemblances that spoke of inheritance rather than conquest. The later kings seemed entirely less martial than the earlier ones, perhaps reflecting the transformation from practical leaders to figureheads.

Loki had been thinking of this as a procession of kings, but in fact there were queens present as well, and one or two of them- the redheaded one in the elaborate dress, and the round woman with the imperious face- were formidable-looking indeed.

And here, right at the end of the procession, was a kind-looking blue-eyed man in a naval uniform, and beside him a really lovely young woman, a girl, really, with dark hair. She held the man's arm, squeezed it affectionately, and walked forward. As she did so, it was as though she walked through an aging spell, her hair turning silver, her face becoming lined, until she stood before Mordred as a grandmotherly-looking woman in a coat, skirt and hat of soft periwinkle that accented the forget-me-not blue of her eyes.

"You appear," she addressed Mordred, "to be in some confusion about the current state of the realm." Her voice struck the exact note of authority for which Loki had reached- by human standards, she had been Queen for a very long time, and in addition, she perhaps had some experience with the pains and confusions of the young.

Mordred raised his eyes to look at the old lady, managed to focus on her, and said in a complaining sort of voice, "You will tell me the realm belongs to you."

"Oh, no," came the reply, accompanied by a firm shake of the silvery head and the periwinkle hat. "That is not true, and has never been. It is far more accurate to say that I belong to the realm." Mordred looked bewildered, and the Queen smiled kindly at him. "It is true that, in the normal way of things, you would have become king if you had only been patient. I think, perhaps, your pain was too great for patience, is that not true?" Mordred only swallowed hard, but something in his eyes acknowledged the truth of her words. "You are not the first or last whose expectations of inheriting the throne were thwarted by means outside their control." Considering the circumstances under which Mordred had lost his claim to the throne- war of his own making- Loki was almost impressed that he gave no sign of discomfort at the words. Loki himself felt heat rushing all through his body at the unintentional reminder of his own crimes.

The Queen, thank the Norns, did not notice Loki's guilty twitch. "There are those who expect a throne they do not inherit," she repeated. "And those who never wished for a throne that seeks them out." She glanced over the array of monarchs behind her, and seemed to catch the eye of the wary-looking dark-haired man standing by the miser and the giant, then turned her gaze to the man in the naval uniform who stood behind her, before facing Mordred again. "Sometimes to their great cost, sometimes their disaster, it seeks them out, and the only answer is to serve. That is what you need to understand: we are brief, and mortal. Our role may be important in the service of the realm, but we ourselves are much less so. Your father was chosen as king, sought out by the throne, and as his only son, an accident of birth, you were intended to succeed him. That did not happen. My own father was never meant to be king, but he too was sought out for reasons beyond his control. I... " She hesitated, and said slowly, "I expected... I thought surely I would be quite old, my children grown, myself far more prepared, when I became Queen. It would have been... it would have been easier, it would have been happier for everyone, if... " She looked at the man in the naval uniform again, the dark-haired girl suddenly visible if you beheld her out of the corners of your eyes, and even Mordred seemed suddenly aware of the unseemliness of his own desire to supplant his father upon the throne.

The old lady's shoulders stiffened, in what struck Loki as a gesture she may have made many times in the course of a long life in which her own needs and wishes had always been secondary. With an expression of renewed resolve, she addressed Mordred again:

"That did not happen, and no amount of wishing can change it. Your time is past. My own is nearly past, and perhaps one day the time of the throne will pass as well. This is not within our control, nor should it be. Our role is one of service, for as long as we are needed, and so it will remain. The realm will remain, and we will pass into history."

She turned suddenly toward Loki, holding out her right hand. Not for nothing had Loki been raised around royalty: he bowed and, in the same motion, drew Excalibur from its scabbard and offered it to her, hilt-first. She nodded thanks, took the sword, and, after looking at it for a considering moment, raised it.

Behind her, behind the procession of kings and queens, another glowing portal opened. One by one, beginning with the farthest away, the former monarchs walked through it and vanished, until only two remained. The old Queen looked at Mordred with an expression that mingled compassion and command.

"Find what peace you can, Mordred. This destiny is not yours, and that cannot be changed." She reversed her grip on Excalibur and extended it to Loki, who bowed again and took it back. The Queen smiled and Loki felt the most ridiculous sense of having been honoured. Her attention, however, was on the man in the naval uniform, who stepped forward and kissed her warmly on the cheek. In a gentle voice with a slight hesitation, he said,

"Well said, my dear. Your mother and I have always been so proud of you."

The elderly Queen clasped his hands and smiled. "Do give her my love. And... everyone." He nodded to her, acknowledged the others, and walked away through the portal. She watched him go, then turned to Merlin. "I suppose this is all a dream?"

"It will seem as one, when you wake," he assured her.

She smiled again, mischief lurking around the edges. "Philip will be amused to hear of all this. Goodbye." And she, too, walked through the portal and vanished. Loki glanced at Merlin for instructions. The wizard indicated that he wait, and turned to Mordred.

Loki also turned his attention to the king who never was and never would be, and was mildly relieved to see Mordred's expression no longer reflected frustrated madness. Instead, and this was why the relief was mild, he looked grief-stricken and lost. All his life, and apparently throughout the centuries since his death, he had told himself that if he could only become king, everything would be all right: he would be honoured, he would be loved, he would matter. And now, finally, he knew that to be impossible: the realm had rejected him, exactly as everyone else had.

At first, Loki thought Mordred was bowing, crumbling, under the weight of that knowledge. And then he realized Mordred was actually getting smaller.Smaller and... younger. Loki, Steve, and Coulson looked at each other in confusion and, it must be admitted, some alarm: if Merlin intended to transform Mordred into a child and then send for his mother to collect him...

"Come on, youngster," said another voice, one Loki recognized immediately and with relief. Standing beside Merlin was Gawain. Not the middle-aged, hopeless Gawain of TheCandleIntheWind, the one Loki had, as he read, imagined looking like Thor, bewildered but trying to understand and defend the inexplicably vicious younger brother he was unable to really love.

No, Merlin had spared them all that, and the Gawain he showed them was the cheerful young scapegrace of that same ridiculous television program, good-natured and well-intentioned and bound for all sorts of mostly-harmless trouble. It made no sense, of course, but Loki found himself utterly unable to care. Gawain held out his hand in the fond gesture of an adult encouraging a child to come in from playing, as if he expected Mordred to simply take it and walk away with him.

"Come on," Gawain repeated, his tone unmistakably affectionate.

"I'm sorry," said Mordred, who was now about eight years old, looking up with a tear-streaked, remorseful face.

"I know," Gawain said gently. "I'm sorry, too. So are the rest of the boys. Let's go find them, all right?" Mordred bowed his little head and walked over to Gawain, who ruffled his hair and pulled him close in the rough but kindly manner of older brothers everywhere. Mordred threw his arms around Gawain's waist and pressed his face into the older knight's side as if hiding his tears. Gawain rested his hand on Mordred's dark head, looked at Merlin and then Loki with an expression of gratitude, then lifted his little brother in his arms and carried him through the portal.

"There is not a single aspect of my treatment of that boy that does not fill me with shame."

"I know. But you have nothing to offer him except pity, and pity is not what he needs."

"You are, as usual, right."

With no surprise whatsoever, Loki turned to see Arthur himself, finally Arthur, standing next to Merlin, an Arthur who somehow combined the well-meaning innocent of the television program with the older, tired king haunted by the drowning of the infants.

"The problem," Merlin said, "or at any rate your part of his problem, is that you do not love him, and you never can. Nor does his mother, at least not in a way that can do him anything but harm. His brothers do, and you should leave him to them. Who knows? Maybe one day it will all come around again, and they will turn out to have done him some good."

Arthur smiled tiredly at Merlin, who smiled back and gestured toward the glowing portal. Arthur nodded to Loki and his friends, and disappeared. Merlin held out his hand to Loki, who handed over Excalibur without hesitation. Merlin gestured with the sword, and the portal vanished.

"Well," Merlin said brightly, "that's that. I don't know whether to apologize for the trouble or thank you for the help, so I suppose I should do both. Oh- you can come out now," he added. Thor, Stark, and Fury appeared before them, looking utterly confused. Merlin smiled cheerfully upon them and handed back Excalibur. As Loki took it, Merlin said mildly, "I can tell you're not the type to get ideas, but... don't get ideas. Simply wielding Excalibur is not enough to make you king."

"I have no such ideas," Loki replied fervently, and Merlin smiled.

"I thought not. Thank you again."

And he was gone.

~oOoOo~

"And that, I guess, is that," Mitchell said, looking around the conference table once again.

"I guess," Stark agreed. They all looked down at the table, where once again Excalibur lay on a folded blanket, pulsing with power, waiting to once again be needed.

"Except, of course, for returning Excalibur to the Lady," George commented.

Fury cleared his throat. "About that. As a representative of SHIELD, I think I can tell you the agency isn't going to want to lose control of an artifact with so much power attached to it."

George raised his eyebrows. "No?"

As George spoke, with everyone looking at him, Loki reached down and snatched up the sword, pulled it out of its scabbard. As power swirled through and around him, he called upon a spell he had not been able to use since he left Asgard.

There was a blaze of light, and Loki and Excalibur were gone.

~oOoOo~

He landed on his feet, in the middle of Pomparles Bridge. The sky was becoming bright in the east, light beginning to dance on the water. Loki, the sword and scabbard clutched to his chest, looked down at the surface of the river.

"I wonder what it looked like, when it was a lake."

Loki turned, startled but not surprised, not really. Annie was leaning on the stone wall that bordered the bridge, looking down into the water. He walked over to join her.

"How did you know where I was going?" he asked.

"I didn't have to," she admitted. "I can... follow people I'm fond of, so I just sort of teleported after you. I did know, though."

"Oh, yes?" Loki asked. "It did not occur to you that I might be planning to steal Excalibur and embark upon a life of crime?"

Annie wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned into him. "Don't be silly," she said affectionately. "You might want to wait a moment before you throw that back, though."

Loki cocked an eyebrow. "Why is that?"

Annie glanced up at the sky. "Because the others should be arriving right about- "

Thor landed on the bridge behind them, George and Mitchell clinging self-consciously to him like baby monkeys. A second later, the Iron Man touched down, releasing the arm wrapped around Captain America.

"- Now," Annie said cheerfully.

"Oh, good. We are in time to add our thanks to yours," Thor said, as the three joined Loki and Annie. "Coulson and Fury are sorry they are unable to be here, but they seemed to think it would be tactless for representatives of SHIELD to be present. Also, they are busy making up an excuse to the agency for the disappearance of Excalibur."

"Magical vaporization is my guess," Stark commented, looking down into the water.

"That sounds perfectly reasonable to me," Steve agreed.

Loki looked around at the group. "You would all feel extremely silly right now, if you had guessed incorrectly about my intentions."

"So we would," Mitchell agreed. "Lucky for us that we didn't."

Loki smiled and turned to George. "Is there a particular way I should do this?"

George shrugged. "Not that I know of. Just chuck it as far as you can out into the middle of the river, and we'll see what happens."

Loki wrapped the baldric more securely around the scabbard. "Thank you," he said simply, then clutched Excalibur in the middle, drew back his arm and threw the sword as hard as he could. It tumbled end-over-end as it rose in the air above the River Bruges. As daylight struck the hilt, the river disappeared and was replaced by a great shimmering lake.

Excalibur fell toward the surface of the water, which was suddenly broken by a woman's hand and arm, clothed in a shining white garment. The hand caught Excalibur by the hilt, waved the sword three times, and disappeared beneath the waters of the lake.

A moment later, they were once more looking down at the moving surface of the river.

~oOoOo~

Coulson had promised that SHIELD would repair the damage to their house. SHIELD was rather better than its word, matching paint and tile and even the patina of age to such an extent that it was very difficult to envision where the damage had happened.

Loki, head ducked to avoid smacking it on the sloped ceiling of his box room, was unpacking his belongings and feeling the unutterable relief of being safely at home. Downstairs, he could hear the others calling back and forth, commenting on whether the furniture was all in its proper position again, whether the entryway really looked exactly the same as it did originally, and finally George remembering they'd left wet and muddy laundry on the cellar floor beside the washing machine for a whole week, and a debate began about whether they should try to salvage any of it with bleach, or throw it all away and start over.

Loki sat down on the edge of his bed- his familiar, friendly, too-short, too-narrow bed. He had a feeling he was going to sleep extremely well tonight, curled up in his usual awkward ball of limbs, an arm or leg hanging over the side like an afterthought.

"Have you got anything for the laundry?" Annie asked from the doorway. Loki looked up at her with a smile.

"I was just sorting through my things. I will bring anything that needs washing in just a moment. And then perhaps I will pay a visit to the school, to see whether they will allow me to return."

"Mr. Fury seemed pretty confident that wasn't going to be a problem," Annie reminded him.

"I should probably send a note to our Member of Parliament, to thank her for her assistance," Loki said, remembering what Coulson had told him in the boat.

"That's a really good idea," Annie agreed. "And perhaps on the way home you can pay a little visit to the toyshop." Loki blinked at her, trying to look innocent, and remembered that Annie had been the one to pack everyone's belongings for their time on the helicarrier. Relentlessly, Annie went on, "Just so Thor doesn't get lonesome, all by himself in your sock drawer."

Loki's face became warm, but he joined Annie's laughter. "Yes," he admitted, "I had thought of doing exactly that."

"Well, let's have a cup of tea first," she suggested.

Loki nodded, rose cautiously to his feet, and followed her downstairs to join the others.