Chapter Text
Loki had sat on the Golden Throne of Asgard, looked on Midgard as a conqueror, wielded the power of more magical artefacts than most people would ever know existed, and yet the moment he’d remember all his life was when Nuada Silverlance stepped away from him and looked on a Midgard swamped in darkness as far as the eye could see; he heard the elf’s sharp intake of breath as he looked at a nameless Midgardian city sank into chaos, and his heart felt too small for what he felt.
“It’s only temporary,” he felt compelled to explain, the old habit of putting down his magic that he’d thought forgotten. “But the humans weave such fragile webs… it wouldn’t take much more power to make it permanent.”
Nuada turned to look at him; he was barefoot and dressed in ill-fitting Midgardian clothes, carelessly leaning on his beloved weapon, and yet Loki (who had summoned his full battle armour the moment he regained control over his magic) still felt the urge to fidget.
No. Enough. That was the boy he once had been, not the man he was now. Now, they were equals.
Loki was expecting questions. He’d prepared enough facts, justifications, half-truths and lies to sink an army, but Nuada just turned away again to look into the darkness, the corner of his lips quirking up ever so slightly as he looked at the fire that had broken out in a distant street.
“It was very skilfully done, as it was bringing us here to witness it,” the elf said. “It cannot have been easy, John told me your incarceration was most strict.”
“John?” Loki’s throat felt tight; of course that Prince Nuada Silverlance of Clan Bethmoora wouldn’t lower himself to consort with a human, but a slim blade of ice and silver appeared between his fingers all the same.
“One of my captors… a most useful source of information.”
The knot on Loki’s throat loosened and he twirled the ice blade in his fingers; this John was nothing more than Selvig or Barton had been to him, then.
“Well?” Nuada asked; he stood on the edge of the roof, his feet flexing distractingly over the dirty concrete floor while the smoke-tinged wind whipped his hair around his face. “What now, my prince? I suppose you have something more in mind than this chaos, as magnificent as it is.”
Loki approached him cautiously. He’d expected to have to talk or trick the elf into keeping his company once he’d taken them out of Antarctica and into the inhabited parts of Midgard.
“Alas,” he said with a smile and an expansive hand gesture, “it is now time to bring your words from the past to mind and seek some hidden refuge. I have more hounds on my trail than these befuddled humans.”
He hadn’t meant to confess that. Not right away. Not until he was in a position of strength, able to demand Nuada’s help if it wasn’t offered freely. But the elf prince just grinned and Loki’s blood fizzled like it always did when he took his carefully-laid plans and threw them aside for a moment of recklessness.
“Hunters make the very worst preys, my prince,” Nuada said in a low voice. “And I, I happen to be a very skilled hunter. I dare those hounding you to find us if we don’t want to be found.”
***
They didn’t want to be found. Under Nuada’s instructions, Loki took them on a quick tour of three realms as they laid false trails, backtracked time and time again, and muddled their tracks -both physical and magical- well beyond recognition.
They came to rest, at last, on a small cave in a distant province of Svartálfaheimr. Nuada moved into the darkness to uncover a small container of witch-fire, and Loki was able to look around to see a few boxes covered in dust and an empty hearth; the elf gave a satisfied look to the place, then turned to his guest and bowed.
“Welcome, my prince. No ills may befall you while you stay under my roof.”
In spite of himself, Loki was charmed by the old-fashioned gesture, and smiled and bowed his head in return.
“Thank you, Nuada Silverlance. May your generosity be returned to you a thousandfold.”
The elf threw open one of the boxes and spread some massive silver furs in front of the still unlit heart.
“Sit,” he told Loki. “Food and drink will have to wait until I can go out hunting, I’m afraid, but fire and comfort we can and shall have.”
Loki folded himself down onto one of the furs and watched Nuada light a fire on the hearth with some dusty firewood that had been stored in a corner for Norns-knew how many years; the elf’s scarred hands moved quickly and his equally-scarred face looked serene and –dare he almost say it- happy.
“After so many years mired in Midgard’s filth, coming back to a magical realm is like a hot bath after a long hunt…” mused the elf.
Having lit the fire, Nuada stood up, stretched and unselfconsciously began to take off the ill-fitting Midgardian clothes.
Loki looked away at once, then caught himself doing so and scowled at the fire. He wasn’t the blush-prone youth he’d been once, the one who’d preferred to visit the communal bathhouse late at night to avoid the crude jokes of the warriors and the way his eyes inevitably tended to wander; he was older now, wearier, he’d seen things that would have made many lose their minds, and one shirtless elf prince wasn’t going to rattle his composure, no matter how many times he’d dreamt of those battle scars.
He looked up to see Nuada, now dressed in breeches and a loose shirt, taking a knife to his long hair; the yellowed ends came off in one slash and joined the pile of discarded clothing.
“Ah, what I would give for a bath,” Nuada said wistfully. “But no matter, there is a stream nearby and I will fetch water while I’m at it.” He crouched to rummage in a box, then stood up and looked around himself as if seeing the cave for the first time. “I do apologise, my prince, if these lodgings aren’t quite what you’re used to.”
Loki looked around the small cave, with its dusty wooden boxes and rough furs, and a half-maddened giggle escaped his lips; compared with the fall, The Other’s dungeons, the hideout Barton had arranged, the SHIELD prison, it was, if not home, the closest he’d come to in years.
“If you only knew…” he said, reining in on his outburst.
From the entrance to the cave, lance and hunting bag in hand, Nuada gave him a long look; for a moment, Loki thought the elf would say something, but he just shook his head (the blunt ends of his white hair brushing his collarbones) and left.
Loki waited just long enough to make sure he was alone before shooting to his feet.
The first thing he did was to sidle up to the cave entrance and look outside; he saw a wind-swept moor and Nuada’s slim figure moving almost invisibly between the massive granite boulders that dotted the landscape in what looked like a natural arrangement until Loki looked at it from the corner of his eye. Measuring the distance between the cave and the line of short trees that marked the presence of the stream and considering Nuada’s speed, Loki walked back inside, satisfied with the time he had.
If Nuada didn’t want his belongings examined, he should’ve known better than to leave Loki alone with them.
It only took a wave of his hand for all the dust to disappear, both for comfort and to avoid leaving revealing tracks, and then Loki set to work on the three large wooden boxes that were the cave’s sole furniture.
One was filled with more furs and also old clothes and worn boots, leather breeches and soft linen shirts kept between handfuls of dry leaves dipped in scented oil; Loki’s long fingers absolutely didn’t linger over the famed Alfheimr embroidery while he searched between the clothes and furs and then left everything as he had found it.
The second box was full of metalworking tools and dwarven gadgets, both whole and half-dismantled. Loki examined some of them, at a loss as to their function or workings, and wondered how Alfheimr’s heir had come to learn such a base (and yet –admittedly- useful) skill; Odin would have balked at the thought of one of his sons apprenticing in a profession that didn’t involve people hitting other people.
The third box held knives, bowls, some dusty food items and basic household equipment. Loki let the lid fall closed and looked around in irritation. Where were the keepsakes, the books, the bits and pieces of the Alfheimr court that even a prince in exile could be expected to carry with him? There was only so much he could learn from worn hunting knives and old linen shirts.
Nuada didn’t take long in returning; his hair was wet, his shirt clung to his torso, and he carried a water skin and a bulging hunting bag alongside with his spear.
“I bring food and drink,” the elf prince announced as he made his entrance; he looked over at the cave, then at Loki (sitting in front of the fire), and a corner of his lips quirked upwards. “I hope you found everything to your liking?”
Loki had last been caught snooping when he was barely two hundred years old and no taller than Odin’s knee; he gave Nuada his old smile (the one with the dimples, which had seen him out of more trouble than Thor had ever gotten himself into) and shrugged, secure in the knowledge that he had left no proof of his curiosity.
“I am most grateful for your hospitality. Is there something I might do to help you?”
Nuada shot him a quick, amused look from where he was hanging up the water skin and Loki had a brief second to wish his offer were accepted before the elf shook his head.
“I require no assistance this eve to make our meal, thank you. Are you thirsty? The waters from this stream should be more than enough to wash the taste of Midgard from your lips.”
“Yes, thank you. And they will suffice, too, for scrying. I confess I am curious to see how Midgard has taken to darkness.”
Nuada presented him with a ceramic bowl filled to the brim with water, and then sat in front of the fire and took some oddly-shaped mushrooms and three fishes (already gutted and cleaned) from his hunting bag.
The water tasted like magic, like starlight, like cold winter mornings and juniper. Loki drank deeply and wanted to laugh at himself and at anyone who thought he could have really made his home in a realm as devoid of magic as Midgard; whatever his true nature, he was a creature of magic and belonged somewhere said magic could still whisper in his bones.
And, speaking of magic… the water remaining in the bowl went still and began to reflect distant figures. Electricity and its derivatives seemed to have regained their foothold on Midgard, if the sirens and emergency vehicles were any indication, and some of the Avengers were on clean-up duty (Captain America leading civilians out of a fire-ravaged building, Black Widow coordinating a response centre, Hawkeye giving instructions from a high vantage point). Loki was both bemused and satisfied to realise that his disruption of Midgard’s artificial web had caused a thousand times more chaos and destruction than the Chitauri army had ever managed to do. That was an intriguing thought and worth pursuing it further…
“I want to know how the little bastard did it! He turned off things he had no way of reaching, things that were off any kind of fucking grid! Ultra-secure back-up generators for file-storage in Sweden, nuclear shelters, car batteries in the middle of the fucking dessert… that shouldn’t be possible, that little shit is nowhere near as powerful as powerful as a solar flare or a magnetic field inversion, he just doesn’t have that kind of reach… JARVIS, give me data, give Bruce data, give us fucking something to work with!”
Loki chuckled darkly at the sight of a frazzled Stark shouting hoarse obscenities in his workshop. So blind they were, even the brightest of them, seeing only the things the built and not the delicate tracery of energy that grew from those things like magic grew around better realms…
An answering chuckle echoed his and he felt the brush of Nuada’s spider-silk hair on his cheek as the elf looked over his shoulder.
“Most skilfully done,” the elf said again, straightening up before Loki could turn his head. “Food, my prince? That display of power and bringing us here must have taxed your reserves.”
“Yes, thank you.” The smell of roasted fish was mouth-watering. “And please, call me Loki. Not only does our situation not merit standing on ceremony, but the Norns know how many times the Allfather must have disowned me already.”
Nuada acknowledged this with a wry smile, and then gently knocked his bowl of water to Loki’s.
“Your name will be safe with me, Loki of Asgard.”
“And yours with me, Nuada Silverlance,” Loki answered, and took a drink; he was glad that paying attention to his tutors in the past was now serving him well in dealing with the odd mixture of pragmatism and old-fashioned ceremony that was the elf prince.
They ate in silence for a while, the only noise between them the crackling of the fire and the mournful calls of the whippoorwills outside, at least until Loki devoured his food and brought himself to ask the question that had been niggling at him for a while.
“You seem to understand a lot about magic…” Or, at least, enough to praise Loki’s handiwork and give him a second serving of fish without asking, which was more than Thor had ever accomplished.
“I am no sorcerer,” Nuada said with a shrug. “But my tutors made sure I had a basic understanding of all magics and their workings.”
“Your tutors? I thought…” That Nuada had picked up his knowledge of magic like that of metalwork, after being exiled; that such things weren’t taught, or were taught only to small, shy children who trailed after their mothers’ skirts instead of sneaking to watch the warriors training.
The elf prince shook his head.
“At Alfheimr, we don’t share Asgard’s… unique views on magic. Power is power, and there is no shame in wielding it, in whatever shape.” Nuada gave Loki a long look, yellow eyes glinting in the firelight. “No shame in belonging to any of the magical races, either.”
Loki’s fingers were curled around a blade of ice and magic before he was even conscious of having summoned it, but the elf in front of him didn’t react.
“I was naught but a prisoner, but my sister is Queen Regent of Clan Bethmoora and as such… you know how gossip flies between royal houses…”
Nuada held out both his hands, palms up, fingers outstretched, in a gesture of defencelessness; even so, Loki didn’t like his odds if the conversation turned into a physical confrontation and kept silent, his heart beating fast inside his chest and his fingers curled around his blade.
“Jotun or Aesir, Loki of Asgard, it’s all the same to me, as it should be to all right-thinking creatures in the Nine Realms. What difference could it possibly make?”
Furious (with himself or with Nuada), Loki dropped the glamour that was such an integral part of him that it took a conscious effort to dismiss it; his skin turned blue and his eyes saw into the darkness as if it were as clear as daylight. Nuada’s gaze didn’t waver and his expression didn’t change.
“As beautiful in this form as you are in that of an Aesir,” said the elf softly; then he smiled. “Though I rather suspect neither my cooking nor the crockery will take kindly to the change in temperature.”
Loki looked down at the bowl of roasted fish and mushrooms he still held in one hand, slowly congealing under the cold of his touch, and the Aesir glamour settled over him like a well-worn garment; without looking up, he dismissed the ice blade and started eating again.
No one had ever looked at him on this shape and not recoiled; he remembered Odin, Heimdall, even the Frost Giant whose touch had first revealed the truth to him… he remembered his own eyes in front of a looking glass…
“Of all the things Asgard has gotten wrong in their long and tainted history, this might yet be the worst I have seen,” said Nuada, breaking Loki out of his contemplation. “Oh, my prince, that you could see yourself as I see you…”
Loki gave the elf prince a look in which he couldn’t (and didn’t want to) conceal the suspicion; he’d had admirers in the past, full of honeyed words for as long as they thought they could turn the head of the Allfather’s youngest son that way, for as long as they thought they could conceal from their peers the wooing they would be ashamed to do in public. And Nuada had much to win by currying his favour now, on the run and hiding as he might be.
Once again, he had to wonder how much Nuada could see of his thoughts, for the elf gave him a wry look and stood up; he put his empty bowl aside (Loki was bemused to realise the elf prince had given him most of the food he’d prepared) and stood in front of a blank stretch of cave wall, staring intently at the rock texture. He raised one chalk-white hand, traced a few symbols in the air, and the rock shimmered to reveal a niche from where he took a dusty bottle.
Loki couldn’t help but frown, their previous discussion forgotten at the revelation of the hidden cache he’d missed in his search. What had been the symbols used to open it? What else had been hidden there? How many other similar niches were there in the cave? What else did Nuada know how to conceal?
“My last bottle of Vanr apple spirit… it has been a long day, I think we both deserve a drink.”
Loki finished his food in silence, then accepted the glass with the golden, fragrant liquid and savoured it in silence, sip by sip, while Nuada picked up the dirty bowls to wash them by the stream. The situation felt strangely domestic and Loki didn’t know whether to be more unnerved by this or by how loath he was to disturb it.
“Sleep now,” Nuada said some time later, after banking the fire, as he handed Loki more furs. “I’ll keep guard. Sleep.”
Loki curled up under the furs, in front of the hearth, but he did not sleep. Instead, he kept an eye on the figure sitting cross-legged by the cave entrance -fur over his shoulders, lance on his lap, eyes alert- and he chastised himself.
Seeing Nuada again had peeled back layers of age, experience and hurt to reveal the lost, anxious child he’d been once, the one who had fixated on the Bethmoora prince because he’d been his secret and his alone. But Loki didn’t want to be that child anymore; he couldn’t, not if he wanted to survive The Other’s hunt and come out the stronger for it. For that, he needed the ice-cold persona who’d seen him survive the fall and its consequences. There was no place in his life now for softness or wonder or sentiment.
Cradling these bitter thoughts, Loki fell into an uneasy sleep.
He managed to conceal the first time he woke from a nightmare (from a memory) under a rustling of furs and a fake cough, and he hoped the second time his gasp was lost under the calls of the whippoorwills, but the third time he woke (heart beating, panic clogging his throat), Nuada was crouching over him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Your rest is uneasy.” After stating the obvious, the elf sat back on his haunches, regarding Loki thoughtfully. “I will not ask what plagues you so, but I give you my word, Loki of Asgard, that no harm may befall you under my roof.”
Can you stand up to The Other, if he finds me? Loki wanted to ask. Can you stand up to he who guides The Other’s hand? Would you still guard me and my dreams if you knew what I have done, what I have brought upon me? But he said nothing, merely nodded and tried to calm his shuddery breathing while Nuada returned to his post.
After a moment, over the sound of the whippoorwills, he started to hear Nuada’s voice, pitched low in the darkness.
“Sleep a little here,
Sleep peacefully,
For you have nothing to fear…
"In the East the stag does not sleep,
Nor does he cease his belling,
The doe does not sleep
And moans for her young fawn,
The sprightly linnet does not sleep,
The duck sitting on her eggs does not slumber...
“But sleep a little here,
Sleep peacefully,
For you have nothing to fear...
Sleep and be blessed,
For I shall watch over you...
“So sleep a little here,
Sleep peacefully,
For you have nothing to fear.”
Listening to the first lullaby he’d heard since declaring to Frigga (being a self-important three-hundred-year-old) that he was too old for them, Loki fell asleep again and, this time, had no dreams.