LIX

Daybreak, on Midgard

I saw the jotunn today. Well - I saw one of them. Only two survived the attack last night. They have the bigger one bound hand and foot, outside the temple.

I thought I knew what it would look like. I've read about Jotunheim. There are only a few books that mention the savage realms in the library, and I've read them all. I doubt the authors ever laid eyes upon one. There were fewer tusks and fangs than they described.

Master Alfarr has told me of them. But he does not like to speak of the war, and hurries our lesson on when I try to ask more questions.

Master Tyr loves to speak of the war when he is instructing us in the training yard. Thor would like the stories - they are bloody, dramatic retellings that I suspect are embellished… but he's moved on, to more advanced techniques and instructors. I am stuck with the younger cohort.

Last week Master Tyr told us of the time a jotunn beast, a female one, stuck its claw through his shoulder. He showed us the scar. I asked him how he survived, and he laughed. He said that he stuck a dagger in her belly, and ripped out her guts with his free hand. He said she wailed and snarled. He said the most fearsome beasts are the cornered ones, and he barely dug out her claw from his flesh in time to escape. He took the claw home as a prize. He wears it looped round his neck on a leather thong. A piece of the monster that nearly had him, Master Tyr is fond of saying.

I think this beast was male. The one Thor and I saw today. It was freakishly tall, thick and broad and such a strange blue color. There were patterns on its skin, I think - I couldn't tell what they were, Father wouldn't let me get too close. He held me at his side the entire audience, like I am an unruly child. Not Thor. Of course not Thor. It was very embarrassing. I only wanted to see the patterns, maybe see if a jotunn's skin is truly freezing to the touch.

The other is inside the temple, unbound but guarded. Master Tyr grumbles about it, but Father cut him off and said something about the lines on his brow demanding respect. I wonder what these lines look like, what they mean, to have wrought such a storm in Father's temperament.

That other jotunn didn't attend the audience. Father went in to question it in private. When he came forth later, he told us that they were fragment of a raiding party. Though he put down Laufey's Rebellion three centuries ago, the jotnar still attempt to take advantage of the weak humans, from time to time.

The presence of a jotunn on Midgard's soil violates the terms of Jotunheim's surrender. Father says he must speak to King Laufey about the fate of the pair. But he will execute them, no doubt. At least the bigger one.

Master Tyr says he must. What else could he do? Just let the beast roam, hunting and slaughtering at its brutal will? That will do no good, Master Tyr says.

I wonder if we will be expected to attend the execution.

It is the duty of the King of Asgard to dispense justice, and as its princes, Thor and I must learn to carry it out.

Thor says he wants to go, but I can't tell if he was only saying that because we were in front of Master Tyr and the other commanders.

I don't know - I don't know if I do.

Loki Odinsson, Prince of Asgard

LX

He does not sleep. Has not slept, for several nights. Dreams have too many doors.

Instead, Lukas barricades himself within. Paves over the thin places that could be mistaken for anything other than mortal. Binds his magic down as tightly as he possibly can, until the air feels empty of oxygen, suffocating.

There will be no more conversations with that witch. Until she looks elsewhere, Lukas can bear the discomfort of being entirely Lukas. Human but for a few sparks that stubbornly remain. It is safer to become him fully, what with the increasing number of otherworldly visitors.

There is no one else. There will be no one else.

Lukas watches the soft currents of cloud from the window as the Helicarrier begins a gentle descent, a slow thousand mile arc towards the ground. A headache drums against his skull. An echo of a vibration, though he can tell it is not from the turbines of the engine - rather, the shift of something much deeper.

The realms.

They have long been locked in ancient orbit, circling round Yggdrasil's trunk. But this is faster. It feels artificial, almost. As if a hand has reached through the depths of space, grasped at a mountain chain, and pulled.

The boundaries are weakening in the wake of that unknown force. Which is likely how the witch was able to dreamwalk with such ease into his mind. His seidr fluctuates in strength, and it is difficult to predict how it will interact with the increasing fluidity of geometry.

Perhaps it is the Tesseract that warps the natural orbit of the realms. That is his hypothesis, and one he will not be able to test anytime soon. Until S.H.I.E.L.D. realizes they are hopeless to halt these distortions without his expertise, and forget any pretensions to knowing the useless dead past.

"You look tired."

That is Steve, from the doorway. His jacket is on, the collar turned up. A bag slung from his shoulder.

"Don't tell me I am to deal with Stark alone," Lukas says, his voice nearly a croak from lack of use. He clears his throat.

Steve ducks into the room. He joins Lukas at the window, shoulder to shoulder. "Ah, Natasha'll keep him reined in, till I get back."

"From where?"

"I'm taking a helicopter back to Brooklyn."

"For how long?"

Steve's face creases, somewhere between a smile and a frown. "Not forever. Just - I need to - I need a break from this. All of this." He waves a hand, encompassing the hangar to their left, the quinjets, the bulk of the Helicarrier itself. "Fury's on his way up from DC. I know Coulson probably sent for him. To talk me down, about the Tesseract."

"And you don't want that. I admire your dedication. Or should I say, stubbornness."

Now his lips tilt a fraction more towards a smile. "I'm not admitting to anything." He rubs a hand over his chin. "But no. I don't want that. Fury will come in and he'll be practical. He'll tell me all the reasons why we should use the Tesseract. He'll probably have a bullet-point list. And I don't want to hear it." He shakes his head. "All this time spent with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents… I feel like I'm losing sight of myself. Of why I joined up."

"That's a story I never heard," Lukas says.

"Really? You might be the only one. I think they made a few movies about it. Wrote up the story and put it in a museum, even."

"Lucky for me, I've a primary source right here." Lukas gestures with a flourish. "Every historian's dream."

"Strange to think of it as history," he mutters. "I wanted to protect people that couldn't protect themselves." Steve's breath fogs a tiny spot on the window. "S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to protect the lives that they judge have value. They see it all as some grand strategy… and I don't."

The worth of an individual life is not something Lukas understands. He listens to Steve and knows, in his deepest heart, that were he to be weighed and measured against the Captain, he would fall short.

It is an eternal knowledge, this lack of density. This hollowness of his soul. A fact that has been with him always, learned alongside the mechanics of walking and the fluency of speech.

And as for a grand strategy - Lukas cannot even trust the paths of the stars, anymore. He is left with just chaos and twisted dreams that he fears will soon come with waking instead of sleeping. Just the Void and not the Void. Dark and light.

"What do you see?" Lukas asks. He wants to be told where the horizon is, by someone he trusts to have a keener, clearer eye.

"All I know," Steve tells him, "is that if I had been judged a few years ago, by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s arbitrary standards, I might not have made the cut. All I know is that we don't know the worth of a life. Which means we've got to treat all of them as important."

There is weariness in the set of his broad shoulders. More than just fatigue. It is older, a tired grief, worn smooth by the passage of time, but immovable. It calls to Lukas like a familiar reflection.

He cannot resist plying the Captain with more questions. "In your war, was there truly a man who tried to tame the Tesseract?"

"Yeah. Johann Schmidt. And Hydra." Steve breathes a long sigh from his nose.

"What happened?" Lukas half-whispers.

"They made weapons, like I said. They took a power they shouldn't have had and used it to hurt people."

"I have studied the history of this world," Lukas reminds him. "And you do not speak alone, but with a thousand voices."

Steve tilts his head. Touches his breath fog on the glass, and leaves a fingerprint. "We can't change human nature. But that doesn't mean we should give people stronger weapons to kill each other. We don't have to make it easier."

Lukas concedes with a nod. "I assume you did not make it easy for this Schmidt."

Steve snorts. "Tried my best. And at the end - when Schmidt held it in his hands… it did something. Disintegrated him. Took him apart, or took him somewhere else. I don't know. I saw a field of stars…" Steve shakes his head. "We're not meant to handle it. I know that. I've seen what it can do."

Spontaneous, unwilled transportation. That is power indeed. All magic at its core is tied to a being's will. To have a portal form undirected seems a fundamental transgression. As if time had spun backward, or the realms had grown still, halted, frozen in their orbits.

Or, say - if the dance of the realms were to accelerate, gain speed, even collide?

That primordial vibration resounds in his head again, a great cosmic movement. These distortions that are forming now are not true portals. He has no reason to think so. Just a casualty of the unseen power of the Tesseract. Unless... there is a will directing it. The witch, Lukas thinks. It could explain the acceleration of the realms, the spontaneous distortions, the invasion of his dreams.

That information rests on the tip of his tongue. Lukas swallows. He is determined to cast his vision back to earth. To possess only the dream of mortality.

The denial throbs like an old wound, lips sewn shut.

Steve shoots a glance at him. "About the Tesseract… meant to say thanks. For telling me."

Lukas bites the inside of his cheek. "Yes, of course."

"It's okay. I know that's not why you did it." Steve nudges him with a shoulder, a friendly motion that catches him off guard, given the words he's speaking. "Telling me was an unintended consequence to pissing off Coulson. But still. I needed to know. So, thanks."

He can only nod, and follow the Captain as he walks to the door.

"Don't do anything crazy while I'm gone," Steve calls as he retreats down the hallway.

The humor jars him. In his strange, half-awake state, the reply is a beat too long in coming, and just slightly off-kilter. "Oh? Any ideas you'd be willing to share?"

"I dunno - no revealing any more shocking information, I guess."

A sense of irony sits like a lump of coal at the base of his throat. He can feel the hysteric edge in his voice. "I've got plenty of secrets, Captain. Which would you like me to keep?"

Steve hesitates on his path. Lukas thinks he might ask. The idea of his soft concern is unsupportable, now, when all is brittle, fault lines in every direction. But to his relief, Steve peeks out the small porthole window and appears to note the position of the sun. He hefts his bag higher and speaks while walking backwards. "Well, Clint's always taking bets on whether or not Fury's a boxers or briefs man. I'd be glad to let that one stay a mystery."

"Oh, but I know for certain the only undergarment Fury wears with that getup is a black leather cup."

If he had the energy, Lukas would wink at the two passing lab technicians who have stopped to gape. Steve tries to stifle his laughter. Waving, he turns the corner.

And then Lukas is alone again. He stares, an afterimage of the Captain imprinted upon his gaze until he blinks. It is absurd, but he feels as if he's lost his only ally. Left with just the S.H.I.E.L.D. drones. No one left now to advocate for the worth of a life against the Void.

Those drones soon track him down. "Coulson wants you in the conference room on the upper deck," an agent informs him.

"Why?" he snaps.

The man shrugs. "Dunno. Something about an initiative."

Lukas grumbles, but he meanders in that direction. Roundabout. There is nothing he wants to say to Coulson. The damnably perceptive man. Lukas's tongue is dull and heavy. His skin might well be as transparent as glass, his joints just as fragile. A wave of exhaustion sweeps over him.

He nearly keeps walking when he reaches the appointed meeting place. Agent Roberts is there to catch him, with a curt wave. "Here," she says.

Coulson stands with Natasha Romanova and Clint Barton, thick as thieves. Lukas drifts in the room, but says nothing. The supervisory agent clears his throat.

"I've invited a few potential members of a new initiative that we're starting here at S.H.I.E.L.D.," Coulson says. "Captain Rogers, unfortunately, could not attend, but he is on the shortlist as well."

Natasha glances around. Her lips quirk up. "No Stark?" she asks, a tinge of hope in her voice.

"He's on the shortlist too, but final approval is still pending. For as long as I can manage it," Coulson replies with a smirk.

Barton glances around the room. "I thought you said there'd be six of us on this initiative thing, including Stark."

Lukas counts in his head. Natasha, Barton, the absent Captain. Lukas himself. Tony Stark. That makes five.

"We're waiting on one more," Coulson says, casually looking down at his watch.

Foreboding, all spindly-legged and eerie, crawls up Lukas's spine. Who else on the realm of Midgard could match this group for strength and power?

The door opens.

Thor's large frame dwarfs the metal entrance. It swishes shut behind him, nearly catching the corner of his bright cape. Thor pulls the fabric away, saving it the ignominy, before he faces the group in the conference room on the upper deck of the Helicarrier.

His vision shivers, almost doubles. Thor, here, in front of him, and Thor, a ghost, a memory. Screwing his eyes shut for a moment, he grasps for Lukas. Holds him so tightly that if there were flesh beneath his palms it would bruise. Tight enough to snap a human's neck.

Lukas opens them in time to see the realization play out upon Thor's face. Silent, but shattering. It migrates to his body like a shockwave. First, he stumbles back a step. He drops Mjölnir. The head of the hammer crunches the riveted metal of the floor. Then, Thor lurches forward, and finally halts, frozen with confusion. The white ring around his eyes is visible from this distance.

Lukas wants to look away. He wants it desperately, but Thor commands attention. He always despised that.

Coulson starts to speak, officious, nearly smug. "Everyone, this is Thor. Thor, this is - "

The man cuts him off by shoving past. "Loki?" he breathes, so quietly.

He had despised that unthinking authority, and despised Thor himself, a constant low-grade fire in his gut that radiated through his chest and mixed with the absolute ache of affection such that he could not tell the difference.

"Not Loki," he insists, a wish spoken from the depths. "My name is not Loki. I am Lukas Eld."

The prince halts in his tracks.

Lukas turns on Roberts. "Tell him. Tell him who I am."

Her gaze flicks wildly between them. "Lukas Eld," she stutters. "You're Lukas Eld."

Thor looks as if he's taken a brick to the head. Or, worse, as if he's woken, into a nightmare, surrounded by familiar faces that gaze upon him without recognition.

Lukas grasps at that. Perhaps - an illusion, or, he can say something, anything, to make the mortals believe Thor has lost his wits.

"You have mistaken me for another," he says, but that is all he manages.

"Lukas Eld is a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D.," Coulson says, slowly. Not firmly, and with little of the conviction the agent typically brims with.

"He's been working with us for months," Natasha adds. Her tone is impenetrable.

Thor doesn't seem to hear them. He stares at Lukas, his expression like a ragged wound. "I would know you anywhere, Loki, even in death." He reaches out one hand and the next sentence from his mouth is the softest malediction. "Please, brother."

The house of cards tumbles beneath Lukas's feet. He's falling again, gravity like shackles on his limbs, his mind whirling down, down, down.

He backs away, puts the metal lab bench as a barrier between their bodies.

Thor, as ever, does not adjust his course. Certain of his own purpose. "Your mind is addled - you have forgotten yourself," he mumbles. "We shall return home and - "

"No." The word is ground out between his teeth.

The golden prince of Asgard, there in front of him, present and solid and the distillation of everything he has disavowed. His past, the people he once believed were his, the family he once laid claim to.

Lukas looks to each of the mortals in turn. "Tell him," he whispers. "Tell him who I am."

They say nothing, frozen in a watchful tableau, a silent chorus witness to a foreign drama.

"You know me," he insists. Desperation stifles all his wit. A sudden thought possesses him - that this might truly be a dream and he the dreamer, not Thor. The witch has invaded his mind before, and created for herself a skin of a person known to him.

It was only in speaking to the imitation of Roseanne that he gained the advantage of knowing her deception.

"Have I not done you service?" Lukas says to Coulson. His eyes are the correct color. "Did I not deliver you the Ring you sought and keep to our agreement?"

"You did," he replies, cautious. "The spirit of it, though decidedly not the letter. As it suited you."

That response is likewise perfectly in line with Coulson's temperament. Lukas jumps at this thin proof and decides to make his case, reasonably certain of reality.

"I might not be transparent enough for your taste, but you agree I have proven myself as one with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best interests in my care. I tell you such that you will remember this not as a debt but rather as an illustration of my credibility. I have been in your country for years. You have known me." Lukas points at the prince without glancing over. "You have known this man for all of a week. I tell you - "

The interruption from Thor is not unprecedented. It is unusually quiet, his tone vibrating with something too deep to name. "Is that true?"

He forces himself to look at Thor. A cloud sits heavy on his brow, a promise of lashing rain in his eyes. Fury. Loki recognizes it where Lukas might not.

Coulson opens his mouth again but Thor cuts him off, verbally this time. "Years? You have been here for years, Loki?" Wheeling on the spot, he claps a hand to his forehead and lets out a noise somewhere between a groan and a cry. "How - how could you?"

Thor is as he has always been, when he thinks himself wronged. He takes up all the space in the room, sucks in all the air. Blows it back out again, twice as hard. "How could you let us think you dead, dust and ash, and all the while, you have been here? Here, on Midgard?"

Thor crosses to him in a few steps, and fists his hands in Loki's shirt. He shakes him, hard and sharp. Lukas's field of vision rattles. "We mourned you!" Thor cries. "I mourned you! Mother mourned you! Father mourned you!"

The veneer of Lukas Eld is thin as mist. It dissipates, violently, with Thor's hot breath on his cheek, fingers digging into his collarbones, with Thor's earnest lies in his ear, and despite everything Lukas has just denied.

Loki knees him in the gut. Thor doubles over, gasping. The fury is contagious, and it spreads in his chest, a black virus. "Mourned me?" he rasps. Loki leans over Thor, not letting him rise. "You accuse me of ill intent, yet by speaking such untruths reveal yourself a more audacious villain. Lying to me, no less. Me. The very one your precious mortals branded as the god of lies. Your arrogance knows no bounds."

Thor gapes up at him. "I - it, it is you. Loki."

In the steady state of freefall, you can almost forget the inevitable end.

Turning away, retreating behind the metal table again, giving his back to all of them, he claws for control, for a handhold. The way he's been taught. The only way he knows how to, faced with Thor, the only way to make Thor see, to make him understand. Just like on the Bridge.

If Thor wants Loki, he will come to regret it.

A spear materializes in his grip. Armor crawls over his forearms, across his chest, growing sharp angles like teeth. He stops the expansion of metal with a thought, refusing to form a golden helm, to form a pair of horns that reach for the stars.

Lukas turns, takes the spear and brings it down, severing the table between them. The halves fall away, their edges glowing orange with heat. He levels the spear at Thor. "No," he says. "No."

Mjölnir rattles in its crater. Thor has dropped into a balanced stance, ready to absorb the force of a hit. Defensive - he does not move to attack. "Loki," he cries. "Loki, please do not do this!"

"NO!" Loki spits. The words are out before he has time to think. His mind is split, each half unaware of what the other will do. It feels like madness. It feels like the Void. "I will not be dragged back to Asgard, like a dog, to bow before the whims of Odin!" The spear shivers in his hold. He clutches it tighter, until his fingers begin to ache.

"Brother - "

"I am not your brother." There is momentary unity in that unassailable fact.

Thor steps forward and Lukas launches a blast of energy at his chest.

He twists out of the way and it rips through the interior wall of the Helicarrier, and then another, and another, until it has cleared a path to the distant sky. Lights begin to flash, alternately casting the room in shades of red and white. An alarm whines, high and shrill. Under the bloody glare, he can see Thor waver. When the next wash of fluorescence lights his features, his expression is hard with resolve.

"Enough destruction, Loki." Bending down, he grasps Mjölnir. "I will not have you harm any more mortals."

"Harm them?" he snarls. "Look around you, halfwit. You landed here for the span of three days and decided to claim this realm as your protectorate. I have been here for years. I have exerted myself to aid them, little as they appreciate my efforts."

Lukas turns on Roberts again. "Is that not so?"

The woman appears unable to speak. "Tell him!" Lukas demands.

Coulson has not been rendered mute. "You did," he says. His eyes dart back and forth, between Thor and himself, to the gaping hole in the wall. "When it became convenient. But you admitted it yourself. You could have ended up working for Raina if we hadn't come first."

A spark of energy flares from the trembling end of the spear. The humans flock to support Thor. As they have done, time and again, just like the Aesir, and the Vanir. A feast of sycophants for the golden prince and aught left but the crumbs for Loki. Nothing has changed.

There is one source of power here that Thor cannot hope to grasp at.

Loki reaches forward, the fingers of his seidr seeking that depthless power, the infinite space of the Tesseract.

It is not near. That jolts him - what have the humans done with it? Where have they taken it?

He can still feel it. A flaming star, dimmed with distance, but not in power. His seidr cannot reach the faint whisper.

"But it is true that you helped us," Natasha says suddenly. She steps toward Loki, her hands open and relaxed at her sides. Unarmed, and making a show of it.

"Your attempt at placating me is noted," Loki hisses. The spear in his hand turns to her chest. He has no intention of discharging an energy blast at her, but the threat is useful. He might change his mind. Plans and counter-plans flit through, rearranging themselves by the second.

Thor clearly believes he will shoot her. Mjölnir sails through the air, hitting him square on the golden breastplate. Loki goes flying, into the inch-thick glass of the conference room, sending spiderwebs of cracks shooting outwards, a fractal pattern of impact.

Magic bursts from inside him, like the head of the hammer has pierced a secret well, all the power that Loki has been burying, has hidden deep. The humans are thrust backward. Roberts flies out of the hole in the far wall into the corridor. The glass of the windows, weakened from his body, blows out. A savage wind from the lower atmosphere whips through the room. Only Thor stands, braced on one knee.

Loki picks up a piece of the window and chucks it at Thor, wanting to see him laid out, like the others. Thor rolls.

"What in the HELL is going - "

Fury comes through the door and immediately ducks. Wisely. A shard of bulletproof glass spears into the wall behind where his head had been.

Loki turns the spear on him. "You - you brought Thor here, didn't you? How did you know - how - it was the witch, wasn't it?" He barks out a laugh. "She has walked in your dreams as well, then?"

He could see it all. Laid out like a map, a web, the sticky threads of corruption, betrayal. And he will not be pinned like some helpless fly.

The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. gapes at him, then turns to Coulson and Natasha, where they are plastered against the wall. "He - what?" Fury's gaze flicks to the right. "Thor?"

"Loki, stop this!" Thor roars, instead of responding. "Loki, just put down your weapon - just stop, please, Loki!"

The next energy blast shreds the floor. Thor dances away, doing something resembling a little jig that Loki would have found hilarious in any other circumstance.

Then the Helicarrier shudders. With a grating, shearing sound, the floor tips. The blast must have hit something vital, below in the engine. Everyone and everything goes sideways. Loki lands on his back, on the section of half-destroyed wall. The two halves of the lab bench come careening towards him. He lies flat as he can while they tumble into the gap that used to be the row of conference room windows just beyond his body. One metal corner scrapes along his calf, sharp pain drawing a cry from his throat.

"Loki!" Thor screams. He has caught Natasha by the arm, suspended above a pile of edged glass. Clint Barton hangs from a twisted metal bar protruding from the hole in the wall of the corridor that is now the ceiling.

Panic is a great, black, sucking depth at the heart of him. Pulling, tugging on his ankle, the call of the Void so loud in his ears that he can barely hear as Thor shouts a dead man's name.

"Shut UP!" Loki - Lukas shouts at his brother - not-brother. "Shut up!"

The spear has fallen away, most likely through the sheet of clouds. His head is splitting. Vertigo. His senses tip forward as the Helicarrier does. He is falling, he has already fallen, slammed into the earth, an impact like as not to split the seam of the world, the way Thor's hammer had split open his chest, in the dream. One dream, or another, they all blur and drip from his memory into his waking sight.

Blue sparks climb up the fabric of his sleeves. He waits for the burn, the sizzle of Thor's lightning, the numbing impact of Mjölnir.

There is nothing. Not lightning - those sparks are not lightning. His breath catches. They're cast by ambient seidr. The Tesseract's power curls into him, like a cat seeking a scratch behind the ears. Fills his veins, his bones, sears in his eyes, as they drip liquid fire on his cheeks, hot and wet.

I have come at your call, a voice whispers. You have the power to destroy him now. As you could not on the Bridge.

He teeters, staggers up to his feet on the partial wall. The fire is within him, and it hurts. He is not made for the heat. "No," he breathes.

"Loki - don't," Thor begs him, as he stumbles forward. "Please don't."

He glances behind, and there is the bitter edge of the Helicarrier, the jagged glass of the windows, a breeze that stirs the highest reaches of Midgard's painfully blue sky. Thor thinks he will jump. Thor fears it. Thor is moored on that Bridge, he realizes in a flash. Just as Loki is. They are both stranded in that world-defining moment, when he chose to fall, the singularity that has warped every other second of his life, cast a pall on his birth and childhood, shaded every word he has spoken to his mother and brother and father into a strange color. The moment that formed Lukas Eld from the Void, his own personal shadow.

"I am not Loki," he whispers.

Lukas looks at Thor, who stares back, wide-eyed, hand outstretched, and he chooses the path that Loki has always chosen. Not to fight. That was a show, a bluff. A lie. Because he's a coward, and a thief. A cornered monster, stripped of the cover it hid behind, and faced with a worthy foe.

He flees. Not over the edge, this time. He rips open a path into the ether, underneath his feet, and falls straight down, knowing it is not the Void that waits.

End of Part Two.