CHAPTER 12 Wayfaring Stranger
This world is not my home
I am bound across the river
Just a poor, wayfaring stranger
Passing through
-Oh Shenandoah
New Christy Minstrels
They arrived in Asgard to a small entourage. Frigga and Odin stood glowing on the steps. Frigga opened her arms, a soft smile on her face.
"Welcome home," She said with warmth in her eyes.
Steve went to meet her. She smelled of jasmine and a spring day and love. Steve realized it was the first he had hugged a woman since...
...since his mother. Frigga's soft body brought back a rush of memories. He sank into her embrace, welcome for the feeling of caring arms. For a moment, he was hugging his mom again, and he was safe.
Odin followed quickly with a tight embrace. He froze slightly once he wrapped his arms around Steve, pulling away to give him a peculiar look.
"Are you all right, Sir?" Steve, realized belatedly Odin had likely smelled the alcohol on him. He felt it lingering in his head, knew it was on his tongue and in his skin. It was no way for a warrior to return home, and he was embarrassed.
"What sorcery is this?" Odin turned towards Loki, his eye sparking with a fury Steve didn't quite understand.
Loki smiled slyly as he gave a lazy shrug. "Father, I trust you didn't think I would allow him to remain mortal. Not as our lives intertwined as they are."
Odin's countenance grew dark. Steve looked at Loki and then at his arm. The faint golden glow it'd had in the mines was still present. It wasn't the reflection of firelight. In fact, all his exposed skin maintained the soft shimmer similar to that of the Aesir.
Steve's stomach dropped away, replaced by a heavy weight, and he thought he might be sick. He tore his eyes away from his shimmering skin.
"Am I..." Steve interrupted, "Am I immortal?"
But he knew the answer before he'd asked it.
Frigga gave him a measured look. "Yes."
Steve felt time slide away. Seventy years had been bad enough, finding all his friends had died in the interim. Eternity stretched out before him with the realization that his teammates and friends would die before he aged another day.
All his hopelessness and rage coalesced into one vocal point. Loki didn't even have the decency to look apologetic, and when he caught Steve's eye, his grin grew. "You!" He jabbed a finger at the smiling god. "That thing you gave me in Niðavellir wasn't mead!"
Loki clapped. "You're right, it wasn't. You drank the mead of the gods and ate the apple of eternal youth. I told you I wouldn't die beside you, some wasted old man. Your serum aged in your veins. I have cured you. You should be grateful"
Loki's head snapped to the side with a satisfactory crack as Steve's fist connected with his face.
Loki stumbled back, his eyebrows raised in surprise, hands flying to his face to catch the blood the spewed from his nose.
Surprise quickly turned to rage, and he scrambled for his staff. He swung it around as a melee weapon, the wood hitting Steve's newly minted shield with a dull clang.
"You may be immortal but you're not invincible!" Loki stalked towards him. "I'll embrace my mortality, if it means being rid of you, you ungrateful toad."
Last time they'd fought, it had taken Iron Man's intercession to best Loki.
This time, Steve knew where Loki's mirages were before he even stepped into him.
Loki snarled in frustration as Steve's shield found his true self with a forceful hit, shoving the breath out of Loki with a grunt.
Loki shot a burst of energy, deflected easily by Steve's shield. The energy deflected upwards, lost in the sky above them. "I know where you are before you do!" Steve goaded.
"Enough!" Odin roared as he stepped between them, holding his arms up to separate the pair. He cast them both in a dark scowl. "You battle like children."
"I do not want immortality! I trusted him and he deceived me!" Steve wheeled on Loki, "I traded the thing I loved most in this world at the hope you would be redeemed."
"You are not the first in your misguided attempts to fix me," Loki scoffed. "You certainly won't be the last."
"You are as terrible as they say," Steve spat, and he cursed himself for thinking there was something good in Loki, something that could be saved.
Frigga stepped forward. "All is not lost. You may find friends among us," Frigga offered.
Steve looked at her. "You don't understand what it means, to lose friends! To live beyond them! I have suffered one lifetime already. Please don't make me endure another," he grabbed her hands. "Take it back. You saved me before. Reverse this curse."
The Queen's face crumpled. "What you have taken...cannot be undone. I am sorry for my son's trickery."
Steve stared into her eyes. And he understood. She'd placed her son's life ahead of his. And she'd do it again. He dropped his hands from hers, stepping back a few paces. He stared at her before turning wordlessly from the strange creatures, demigods or aliens or whatever they were.
They let him go.
He stormed through the halls aimlessly. He looked up at the ceiling, wondered if this would be the place he'd have to call home, knowing he had no place on Earth. Not in another seventy years. His new America barely had room for her Captain now; there was no saying what another hundred years would bring. Fighting back alternating waves of sorrow and rage, he eventually found himself heading back towards his room.
The collected sagas remained on his bed. He settled onto it, still in his full armor as he flipped to the section on Ragnarok. He'd sold his soul to prevent its coming, and he hadn't even known what it was about. Thor's explanation on the way to Lithuania had been sorely lacking.
He scanned his eyes over the pages.
"Winter will fall on the land. Three years without summer,
and conflict and feuds would break out, even between families,
and all morality will die and this is the beginning of the end.
The wolf Skoll will devour the sun and his brother Hati will eat the
moon, plunging the earth until darkness. The stars will vanish from
the sky. The cocks Fjalar and Gullinkambi will signal to the giants
and the gods the beginning of Ragnarok. A third cock will raise the dead.
Jormungand, the mighty serpent, will twist his way towards the land.
With every breath he will stain the soil and the sky. The ship of the giants
and the ship of the dead from Helheim with Loki as their helmsman will sail
towards the field of battle.
Heimdall will sound his horn, calling the sons of Odin and the heroes from
Valhalla. All the gods and giants, dwarves, demons and elves will ride to the
plain of Vigrid where the last battle will be fought.
Thor will fight Jormungdand and win. But the serpent's poison will kill the god of
thunder. Heimdall and Loki will fight and neither will survive the encounter.
The mighty wolf Fenrir will consume Odin."
Steve slammed the book shut, squeezing his eyes shut. Ragnarök would ensure Loki's death, but at the cost to everyone else. Steve had hoped he could save Loki, but was convinced he'd gambled everything on a lost cause. He sighed a shuddering breath, his hand flying to his brow to relieve the pressure building behind his nose.
He felt so lost.
He missed JARVIS. The AI had an uncanny ability to find the right thing to say to him when he was at his lowest. He sought his damaged uniform at the foot of the bed. Rummaging through the things the gods had pulled off him, he found a pencil. He sketched his despair in the margins of the tome.
After an age, a soft knock came at his door. Steve looked up as Frigga pushed in.
"Steve Rogers," she said, settling on the foot of his bed.
"Your majesty," Steve said stiffly, not pausing in his drawings.
"I am sorry you have seen Loki's deceit first hand." She said, placing a cool hand over his, calming his mad sketches.
He pulled away. "You knew."
"Yes," she admitted, her cool eyes meeting his.
Steve wondered if he could find someone who would bargain with him to reverse his immortality, and he was appalled at himself. His mother had always warned him about making deals with the devil.
"You cannot begrudge a mother wishing her sons to never die."
"You fooled me!" Steve seethed.
Frigga nodded, closing her eyes, and Steve found it hard to hate her, felt his anger at her slipping away. "You might save my son yet."
Steve mustered his anger as he stood, the book landing with a thus on the stone floor, its pages falling open to rest on the passage he'd just read. He refused to look at them. "I didn't ask for this!"
"You didn't ask for the serum, yet it was bequeathed to you." Frigga's face hardened. "You sought to save my sons when even Thor could not. You have saved all the worlds. Loki is not anymore broken than you."
"I have already witnessed the deaths of all my friends!" Steve said sharply. "You ask I suffer the deaths of all the new ones I have made!"
"They have many years. You would trade the lives of your friends for the lives of all those that live in all our worlds? I was lead to believe your were more selfless than that."
Steve's mouth hung open and he quickly shut it, drawing his mouth in a thin line. He realized, suddenly, where Loki had learned some of his deviousness.
"You know I wouldn't," Steve said quietly. "But it wasn't even asked of me."
"And if you had refused?"
"So what if Loki died one day? My own life was extended as it was, we would have lived for decades."
"You have never had a son. Decades are nothing to us. In my place, you would have made the same decision. You are a demigod now. Mortals have sought to attain this achievement for thousands of years and here it was, given to you."
Steve sat down heavily on the bed. "I wasn't given the choice. I wasn't even asked." He would dive into the icy Arctic waters a hundred times more if it meant saving America; it was a choice made willingly. But this, this was a horror, and he was an abomination.
Frigga's face shuttered closed. "Yet it cannot be undone." She glided to the door. "Best you make with what you have." She advised.
Steve stared at the door a long time. His hands clenched the fur blankets beneath him as he felt despair claw at him. He bent to pick up the fallen book, settling back to drawing sketches in the margin, hoping it would free his mind from the trap he felt caught in.
As the golden sun began setting, sending brilliant soft-gold light into his room, he sensed rather than saw Loki by the window. He looked up, feeling the hatred for the Trickster God he had stayed for so long curl around him, like the poison he'd suffered.
He hated himself for it.
He hated Loki.
"I understand your anger."
"You don't know the half of it. I trusted you and you tricked me. Steve threw the book to the bed and stood up, marching towards Loki. He wanted to tear Loki's head from his body and he was appalled by himself. He shoved Loki's chest as he yelled at him, "I traded you for the thing that meant the most to me in the whole world!"
"I know," Loki scowled as he stepped out of Steve's reach.
"You don't know," Steve shouted. "You've never loved! You don't know what it means! You don't know how much it was worth!"
"I'm not meant to love," Loki responded crossly.
"Don't give me that bull. I'm not going to put up with one of your pity parties. You think you're the only one who's had a hard life? Who felt like they didn't belong? Tough shit. You get frozen in ice and come back in seventy years, everyone you knew, your whole world gone, be expected to fit in like nothing ever happened, and then you talk to me about feeling out of place. Until then, shut up."
"I," Loki's facade shattered for a moment. In its place was a very young-looking, scared man. "The sagas said-"
"I know what the sagas say. You're telling me that you, the so-called great Trickster God, abides to some words written in a moldy tome? You can't be responsible for your actions because you're going to kill everyone anyway?"
Loki opened his mouth to speak, his brow drawn in anger. Steve spoke over him. "Well guess what, I stopped it. The mistletoe and Balder are safe. You can't get some blind god to accidentally shoot him with an arrow now, can you?
"That's not what-"
"Then what's it about, Loki? I told you, you were no different than any man who's waged war on Earth, each utterly convinced that their side was the righteous one. Who cares about the millions that have to die for you to prove a point?"
"You don't know who I-"
"I know exactly who you are!" Steve roared. "Your mother made sure of that when we were tied to that cursed plant. I could have-should have let you die there in Alfenheim, your soul trapped by that monster. Then you would have grounds to stand on about things being miserable for you. But instead, I thought there was something good, some spark of hope left in that corrupted husk of yours." Steve stormed over to his bed, throwing his few belongings in his worn duffle bag. How it'd gotten there, he could only imagine.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going home," Steve shoved his tattered uniform into the bottom of canvas bag, throwing his few pencils he kept on top of it. He cinched the top closed and threw it over his back.
"I'll kill you," Loki swore.
Steve scoffed. "Wasn't that the whole point of the mead? So that you wouldn't have to die?"
Loki sneered but remained silent.
Steve had almost reached the door when Loki spoke up, his voice quiet, almost drowned out by Steve's footsteps against the stone floor. "What?" Steve spat, glancing over at Loki.
"I'm afraid to die," Loki said again, louder.
"So join the club." Steve's hand grasped the door handle.
"I know what waits for me. Have you read that in the sagas yet?"
Steve hesitated; his hand paused over the handle. "No," he admitted.
"I do. I'm to be tied to a rock with poison dripping on my face, slowly dissolving my body, until, finally, we reach the end of days."
"Ragnarök?"
"Ragnarök."
"How will you be killed?"
"It doesn't matter. The moment I draw my last breath, that's where I'll be. Without Ragnarök, I'll be there for an eternity. Valhalla's shining halls do not wait for me. So you've stayed Ragnarök, wonderful for you. Whether you died a natural death in another hundred years or in a fight on Earth tomorrow, that's where I'm fated to go when you die."
Steve turned. He stared at Loki a long time, testing their bond, finding only truth rang across it. "You are selfish. You'd allow the deaths of billions across all the worlds to save you from your fate."
"I don't live those lives. I live mine. And I don't want to end up in the bowels of Niflheim, for all eternity."
"I thought Niflheim was cold."
"Only parts of it."
Steve settled his shield onto the stone floor. "You betrayed me. You could've asked. I might have said yes."
Loki crossed the room, "I couldn't take that chance," he said as he settled in the empty chair by Steve's bed. "For what it's worth, I am sorry," he said, managing to sound contrite. "I mean to honor the debt I owe you."
Steve's brow furrowed. Hate gathered on his lips, but they were sour. He floundered for words; grabbed at the anger that was rapidly cooling.
"I didn't ask for any of this."
"I didn't ask for you to save me."
"I don't want to see my friends die again," Steve said, and his voice broke slightly with the admission.
"I don't want to die," Loki repeated.
"No one ever does," Steve said quietly, but that wasn't exactly true; not for him.
"We don't have to," Loki told him, looking up coyly.
"Everyone dies, Loki; even you and even me. Nothing is eternal."
"We could be, for a while. The greatest team that ever lived." Loki's grin was predatory, and Steve rolled his eyes.
"We're bonded, Loki. I see through your lies. You mean to get rid of me the moment you figure out how."
"Ah, well, a god can try."
"You're insufferable," Steve sighed, sliding back to his bed. He cracked open the dusty tome again, returning to his sketches. Loki remained silently, the scratches of lead against paper and the soft call of bird song the only sound in the spacious room. Loki slowly moved behind Steve, looking down at his drawings.
"You're quite good. For a human."
"That's high praise, coming from you." Steve refused to look up.
"What are you drawing?"
"JARVIS. Well, what I think he'd look like." Steve was sure Tony had the ability to create an image of his AI. Because he hadn't, Steve had slowly developed an image of a portly man in a tuxedo with a soft, knowing smile. Steve had given him a toolbox in one hand, and a martini in the other-Tony Stark's two requirements for any good butler. With a pang, Steve realized he missed his new team.
"Tomorrow, we go to Midgard," Loki declared, leaning away.
"You hate Earth." Steve finally looked up, looking for some indication of Loki's plan on his face, but it was closed off.
"My mother seeks to keep us here, safe from any troubles that might touch us."
"But you don't want to," Steve guessed.
"We can still die."
"Really?" Steve felt something stir inside him.
"Yes." Loki said, looking out on the setting sun.
"How?" Steve pressed.
Loki remained quiet a long time. Steve looked at him expectantly, searching Loki's face. Loki's clear green eyes finally met his own. He gave Steve a peculiar look.
"I have never been forced to be honest with anyone," he admitted.
Steve let the diversion slide. He figured he had an eternity to find out how he could die.
"I would tell you I have never lied to anyone, that my morality wouldn't allow it. But we both know it's not true."
Loki grinned. "What hope is there for me when the Hero of Earth lies?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "Because now I know when you're trying to get away with something."
"You didn't know when I gave you the draught." Loki pointed out slyly, his eyes crinkling.
"You weren't lying to me. It was mead."
"Indeed it was." Loki agreed, and when he smiled, there was something true in it, and for the first time, Steve realized Loki could be very handsome were he not scowling all the time. He leaned over Steve's shoulder. "You need to add some chiaroscuro shading."
"I was only a first year fine arts student when I joined the Army." Steve muttered. Still, he agreed; the work could use some shading, and he applied it.
"You know, that book is invaluable."
Steve shrugged. "Someone will write another one."
0o0o0o0o0o0o
They stole away in the dark, nebulae and galaxies twisting above them, the shimmering torch fires of Odin's hall left behind them until only starlight guided their path, Heimdall at the end.
"Your mother knows," he said.
Loki rolled his eyes. "She knows everything. If she meant to stop us, she'd be here."
"Take us home." Steve said.
Heimdall cast his peculiar eyes on Steve. "The safety Odin has afforded your world will shatter and it will be open to the incursions of any who might chance upon it."
Steve paused uncertainly. Maybe Earth would be better if they remained here. He was sure that somehow their journey would bring pain to his team; that they'd be better off without him, and certainly without Loki.
Loki spoke up. "He can't protect them from everything. Not with my brother down there. He's a magnet for trouble."
Heimdall wasn't prone to dramatic expressions of emotion, but Steve thought he could detect a smile on his solemn lips.
"Then so it shall be, Loki and Steve, heroes of both worlds." He pounded his great staff down and the bitfrost opened before them, a large, glittering road stretching all the way to home.
They stepped onto it and Asgard blurred behind them.
FIN
Epilogue
This is what they wrote about me
They know me well
A pile of words in permanent thoughts
from the future
Song in D by Mock Orange
On the roots of Yggdrasil in a large room, comfortable and deceivingly warm despite it subterranean location, three women sat chatting.
The eldest was timeless in age. Her black hair had grown white at the temples and spread from there. She had soft crows feet and laugh lines from her many years enjoying existence. Her name was Urd, and she weaved the world's thread. An elaborate tapestry covered the walls with billions of threads crossing in complex patterns until they ended. Near the top of the tapestry were gold threads that wove and crossed with all the other lines, but these rarely ended
Not yet
Beside her, a younger woman was filling a watering pail from an eternal spring. She occasionally made comments on the tapestry as she went about watering the shoots of the great tree shooing away the four great stags that chewed at its new growth. Her long, brown was plated delicately around her skull and fell down to the middle of her back. Her name was Verdandi.
The youngest sister had golden hair and vivid blue eyes, rarely viewed due to a long, shimmering veil that concealed her face. She carefully pieced out the threads Urd weaved. She considered some threads longer than others, gold scissors hovering over the shimmering lines. Occasionally, she'd hold one up, whisper something to it, and cut the thread. Her name was Skuld, and she decided the fate of all men.
On this particular day, which was a Wednesday, she was holding a thread and peering at it quixotically. It had, inexplicably, turned from a bold, dull blue to vibrant, shimmering hue. No matter how hard she tried to shake it from an accompanying gold thread that glittered with green undertones, the two would not become untwined. Her delicate fingers pulled in frustration as the threads wound instantly around one another.
She scowled. "Loki."
The other goddesses looked up quickly. Urd paused from where she was weaving the world's tapestry. She looked over curiously. "He turned a mortal?"
Skuld held up the bound threads. "I didn't approve this!" She cut at the threads petulantly, her scissors bouncing back harmlessly.
Verdandi set the pail down and leaned over her sister's shoulder, examining the threads. "This isn't the first time he'd manipulated the tapestry."
"It is the first time he's made one immortal, however," Urd commented. She continued weaving. Her foot pressed down on the loom, resuming the rhythm of intertwining the threads of what had already happened.
Skuld held the threads, reaching for scissors made of diamond. They reflected the firelight, rainbow prisms cast onto the living wood walls. "Even gods can die," she said.
Verdandi stayed her hand. "Ragnarök will come. The world will end. We have foretold it." She pulled the diamond scissors from her sister's hand, placing the golden ones back in them. "Just because Loki has manipulated this human into immortality does not change this."
"It could," Urd said.
"I won't let it. That's not exciting," Skuld stood, her veil fluttering around her.
Verdandi pulled the threads from Skuld, examining them closely. "Never before have I seen this."
Skuld reached for a blue helmet that sat in the corner, bright wings jutting out from the elaborate headpiece. "I'm not going to make it easy. Loki must learn he can't just do whatever he pleases."
"Loki has been doing whatever we please often enough," Urd said, delicately pulling a orange thread into her loom. It thinned in places, where Skuld had skimmed the scissors along it in consideration. Even now, it was thinner than most of the threads, a man that often stood on Death's thresh hold. Blue pulsed in the orange. Skuld had thought it entertaining to give the man, a technological sorcerer, dependent on the technology he craved. "Man's hubris," she had scoffed. "That'll teach him."
"He should do what we please all the time. We're the Fates," Skuld responded petulantly, strapping on a breast plate
"Sister, do not be hasty," Verdandi counseled, stooping to pick up her pail.
"I have let that mortal live for these many years, long past the life span of any other, save for the one with the metal bones. His death was to be caused by the very thing that made him excel. No man is meant to live forever." She pulled her gauntlets on.
"You'll notice it wasn't without a suitable payment," Urd pointed out. She stepped from the loom and pointed to the tapestry where the blue thread and a deep purple one, once closely intertwined, had grown apart.
Verdandi glanced over. "You have been cruel to that mortal, sister. He lived only to find all the ones he'd love had died in his absence. Now he cannot even remember the mortal that meant most to him."
Skuld scowled, strapping on another gauntlet. "That was amusing," she insisted.
"I imagine they did not think so," Urd mused as she resumed her place behind the loom.
Verdandi plucked at the tapestry, pulling at the golden-green thread. "Loki changes, even now. See how these colors bleed together."
Skuld paused. "What is your counsel?"
"Perhaps we should let this be," Verdandi said.
"I have not seen its like," Urd agreed. "It is easy for good men to fall, and possible for bad men to rise. We have seen it many times. But it is very hard for an immortal to do any thing other than what we decree."
"He struggles," Verdandi confirmed. "He seeks to right himself. He is a ship unmoored, unfettered by our constraints. He has long thought he rebelled, but he only ever did what we always decided he would. He does not know what to do with his freedom of choice."
Skuld took on a mischievous look. She scooped to pick up the long threads. "I suppose I could have fun with this." She grabbed at several thick threads, dark blues and reds that glimmered angrily.
"I opine to give the immortal Loki free will. Strike his actions from the sagas. Ragnarök will come," Urd said, her delicate fingers grabbed Skuld's threads, weaving them into the tapestry that relayed onto the wall. The history of man, billions of lines, confined to a wall on the room of a root.
"No immortal has ever had free will," Skuld agreed slowly. "This could be interesting."
"In all the threads that I watch, even now there are no two bound as these are," Verdandi said, kneeling to water a new, green shoot just outside the door.
Skuld considered the threads she held. "A little change might behoove our Aesir." She set the threads on the ground carefully. She held the angry lines carefully, considering. With great deliberation, she set them to converge. "And it will not be easy."
"Free will never is," Urd agreed.
Skuld began unstrapping her armor.
END
Continued in "Spaces Between Days" s/10011474/1/Spaces-Between-Days
A/N
Wow, what a beast. You can mostly blame teh_helenables for this. She piqued my interest in Steve/Loki and after finding a dearth of fiction for these two, I decided to write my own tale. I hope you all enjoy this and you can count on a sequel, although it'll be slower coming since I'm about to start my premed courses.
Here's some further notes:
In the comic books, Steven's super serum begins to degrade. Loki's call out is a reference to that.
The Dwarves had a mead that could make anyone a poet. I figured it wouldn't be a far reach that they could have an elixir that could make one immortal. However, most mortals would agree this to be a curse and not a blessing. Certainly, Steve Rogers agrees. (Most young people probably do not, but nearly everyone will change their mind when faced with the deaths of friends. Immortality only works if EVERYONE is immortal.)
Although Steve and Loki cannot lie to one another, Loki has quickly realized he can hide the truth. Loki can't chance his nature overnight, even if he has been saved altruistically!
Queen Frigga knows all that happens, but she only tells her handmaiden. Thus, it's not a far assumption that she knew what Loki would do.
chiaroscuro reference is my little shout out to Homestar Runner. If you know what that is, then it probably dates you just a tad. TROGDOR.
Resources:
Chapter title is from Adventures in Solitude by the New Pornographers
On plate armor and how to wear it: how_2100487_
A lot of what I pulled from the Dwarves and Dark Elves and their realm came from here: .
General Norse mythology: . /index_
and .
wiki/Norse_mythology
.
wiki/Yggdrasil
. /index_ -the saga portion that Steve reads is almost exclusively pulled from this website.
Where I got the idea for the tree: 2007/03/21/10-most-magnificent-trees-in-the-world/ and here: wiki/List_of_oldest_trees
Lithuania: lithuania
And the Stelmuze Oak: wiki/Stelmu%C5%BE%C4%97_Oak
I did consider this oak: seek/cache_ ?guid=0108ab83-3cb2-40e8-b7d5-99c454701f64 In Austria, but it is only about 1200 years old. There are older oak trees in America, but I figure if Pliny the Elder was recording Paganistic rituals concerning oak trees, it probably wasn't an American tree they were worshiping!
But talking about grand old trees, Here's a shoutout to the Senator, may he rest in peace. This 3500 year old Pond Cypress tree in Orlando, Florida was burned down by a meth head earlier this year. She lit it on fire so she could see her drugs better.