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olet-lucernam · 7 months ago

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A Hollow Promise [27] chapter vi, part iv

{_[on AO3]_}

main tags : loki x original character, post-avengers 2012, canon divergence - post-thor: the dark world, canon-typical violence, mentions of torture

summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, the Avengers need a few days to build a transport device for the Tesseract. With the Helicarrier damaged and surveillance offline, SHIELD sends an asset to guard Loki in the interim: a young woman who sees the truth in all things, and cannot lie.

Even long presumed dead, her memories lost to her, Loki would know her anywhere.

And this changes things.

Some things last beyond infinity. And the universe is in love with chaos.

(Loki was never looking for redemption. It came as an unexpected side-effect.)

chapter summary : astrid gathers her allies, and draws the attention of her enemies. loki pays a heavy price for a victory.

recommended listening : what you waiting for?, gwen stefani

tag list: @femmealec @mischief2sarawr

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54 weeks and 1 day out

“Sir. We have movement.”

Tony felt the lines of his spine and shoulder blades pull straight, almost reflexively, swivelling into motion at his holographic worktable like a well-oiled gear.

He was going on a self-imposed work diet- an attempt to rebalance, after living in his work for the past few months, building and breaking and remaking in an endless beta-testing phase, a Sisyphean attempt to patch every vulnerability he could imagine- but it had been pushed back, under the circumstances, and he had rationed out enough time for him to deal with the situation, before starting the full detox.

“Where are we, J?” He asked, with a casual upwards flick above the table.

The gesture summoned a hologram above the desk: an architectural scale model of the Tower, crafted in vitrified blue light.

“There is some unusual activity near the roof.”

The area in question turned orange on the three-dimensional map, zooming in for an exploded view of the topmost two-dozen floors.

Tony had remodelled the top of the Tower, after the Battle of New York. Damage had given him the excuse, and the team had provided the reason. Repaired and restructured, several stories added to its height, the broad, smooth curves and open layout modelled after his cliffside home in Malibu were scrapped, the exterior cleaner and sharper- streamlined, from the slanted crown of its roof, through the convex glass-faced layers of the penthouse floors, to the landing pad extending out into the open air.

Locals had taken to calling it Avengers Tower. None of the roster aside from Tony had taken up residence yet, but they all agreed that it was a good base, and Tony kept the personal suites ready for whenever they might need to drop in.

The luminescent A badge shimmered on the side of the building, level with the landing pad. Just below it- within the three floors dedicated to Tony’s private laboratories, workshops, storage, and fabrication facilities- a red diamond marked his current location.

“Surveillance feeds and motion sensor detectors are offline,” JARVIS announced, highlighting the locations in a chain, “as are the door sensors.”

Tony visually tracked the path that it created.

It led from the roof access, into the emergency stairwell, before terminating at the door into Thor’s suite: no more and no less than would be needed to gain access to the building.

It was more than twenty floors above him- a distance that would take several minutes to traverse. He had time.

“You locked out, buddy?” Tony asked quietly, summoning his touch keyboard with a sweep of his palm. “Or are they trying to be subtle?”

“Neither, sir. As with the first occurrence, this appears to be a mechanical failure, not a cyber-attack.”

His gaze narrowed briefly, jaw moving.

Somehow, that was both more and less plausible than JARVIS being hacked.

“Shall I prepare to go into lockdown protocol, sir?” JARVIS proposed. “It should be possible to isolate intruders to one of the penthouse floors, once they are inside.”

Tony contemplated the offer for only a heartbeat.

“No. Clear the way down for her, J,” he decided breezily. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”

There was a brief, audibly judgemental pause in the response time.

“As you wish, sir.” Tony could hear the mild disapproval and concern behind his AI’s cool, crisp tones. “Shall I at least stand by with security protocols?”

“Doubt we’ll be needing them, but- feels like this one’s got a few fireworks up her sleeve.” He conceded blithely, pre-empting the reproach about putting himself at unjustifiable risk. “Alright. Safety off, but finger off the trigger.”

Tony turned in his chair, scanning the room. The workshop was cluttered with a rich confusion of half-finished projects, both metal and digital, strewn across screens and surfaces between discarded coffee cups and various tools.

“And clear the decks, J. Window Dressing Protocol.”

At the command, the screens cleared.

Detailed blueprints and test data were replaced with generic schematics and randomised code, like cellophane pasted on a device fresh out of the box. They reflected in the wall of glass that faced the length of the room- diluted against the dark hallway beyond.

With a gentle swipe, Tony dismissed the render of the Tower.

Rising to his feet, he slid the rolling chair aside, summoned a program and began typing, looking to all the world like the very image of productivity and genius at work.

He wasn’t kept waiting for long.

A gentle rap of knuckles sounded on the reinforced, shatter-proof glass.

Tony’s head snapped up.

The girl whose real name definitely wasn’t Alethia waited just outside, painted like day in the light spilling from the workshop.

She was dressed for the winter night, a New York romance in a soft black sweater and jeans the colour of dried roses, champagne hair pinned in in a braided coil, emphasising a pretty set of cheekbones and long eyelashes. Backs of her knuckles still raised to the glass, snow-dusted and pleasantly windswept, she tipped chin down slightly in greeting.

She looked better, Tony observed. Her skin was clearer, her eyes brighter, expression smoother- less tension-soured, less angry, and more like the person that she had sounded like, aboard the Helicarrier.

Without looking, he tapped a command into the control panel.

The electronic lock switched open with a heavy snap.

Alethia turned the handle, stepping inside, flawless and measured.

“Dr Stark.”

There was a low thrum in her voice, as though cautiously pleased to see him.

“Not-agent.”

Tony’s reply was blandly jovial. Shunting the lines of code aside, he stepped away from the workbench, one hand tucked into his pocket. He had remained outfitted in dark sweats and a gym shirt, standard gear for the workshop, but his posture was that of when he was in a three-piece suit and a boardroom- eyes fixed on her face, chin tilted up slightly, sizing her up with an air of casual challenge.

To her credit, Alethia remained unaffectedly at ease.

It had reminded him a little of Pepper- but not by much.

Virginia Potts was like a ceramic knife. There was a deliberate poise to her, born of a consciousness of her disadvantages in the industry, a refusal to be anything less than a worthy player of the game; she was everything prim and correct and refusing to be intimidated, the result of thousands of observations and lessons learned and choices made, constructed into a statuesque, pleasantly intimidating facade.

Alethia reminded him far more of someone else.

Tony had realised it when she was leaning over the Tesseract transport device, her voice focused and softly mirthful.

Relax. I have steady hands.

For a moment, he had been hurled back in time. He had tasted metal, and dust, lung tissue still burning from the water with each breath, the heat of the forge at his back and the dim cold of the caves at his front, the weight of a car battery slung over his shoulder, and a pair of lean hands- Yinsen, sure and calm and steady, mild-mannered yet ruthlessly insightful, guarded and tired and yet earnest- pouring molten palladium into its cast.

Relax, he had chided Tony gently, tilting the long handles of the tongs, inclining the lip of the crucible over the mould. I have steady hands. Why do you think you are alive, ah?

After removing it from his chest for the second time, Tony had quietly returned the first miniaturised arc reactor to the display mount that Pepper had commissioned, sealing it back in glass.

It was still powered by that delicate ring of palladium, poured by steady hands under a mountain in Afghanistan.

With a steady sweep of her lashes, Alethia looked past Tony’s shoulder, at the screen display where he had been typing.

Her head tilted.

“Was there any particular reason that you were translating the lyrics of ABBA’s Dancing Queen into base64?”

Huh. Well.

Tony had more or less expected that she would see straight through the chains of randomised letters and numbers, like an awl punching through leather, but- the casual quickness was a little disorientating. It was like expecting a card trick, and getting shoved into a swimming pool instead.

“Everybody needs a hobby,” he said, bald-faced and shameless.

“Mm.” Hazel eyes flicked to his, warm as vanilla and laughter. “I’ve heard worse.”

They trailed into silence.

“Ran a trace, on the phone number you left,” Tony admitted boldly. “Before I called.”

Alethia smiled slightly.

“Ah. Were you disappointed?”

“I think I’d be disappointed if it was that easy.” Tony decided, circling the desks, feigning distraction. Alethia was missing a coat that would make sense for the cold. Her nails were trimmed neat, without polish. The only traces of makeup were a swipe of soft black kohl at the corners of her eyes and the sheen of lip balm. Practical, yet impractical. “Complete no sell, though. Impressive. That SHIELD tech?”

The corner of her mouth pulled up further.

“No.”

“You still with them?”

“If I ever was, I’m not now.”

“So you’re a free agent?”

“Free not-agent.”

“How long?”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“I mean, I’d call it due diligence, but I’ve got a pair of cuffs somewhere, if it’d make you more comfortable.”

Alethia’s smile bloomed into a brilliant grin.

“Didn’t think you’d be into that, Dr Stark.”

She sobered slightly, clear as glass.

“Ask me what you want to know. I wouldn’t have left a way for you to contact me, if I wasn’t willing to talk.”

Tony held her gaze for a long moment.

He tapped at the keypad.

Several pages opened across the screens.

Pages of instructions, formulas, tables, calculations, and skeletal molecular structures illuminated the digital glass.

Alethia kept her gaze on Tony.

“What is this?” Tony asked, quiet and direct.

She breathed a slow exhale, hip cocking.

“The formulas, chemical synthesis processes, and medical procedures for stabilising the biological effects of the experimental serum known as Extremis,” she announced clinically, “when introduced to the human body intravenously, subcutaneously, or intramuscularly.” Alethia paused, pointedly. “I did include an abstract.”

“And you broke into my building to leave it here.”

“I apologise for the necessity.” Alethia replied evenly. “It was safer, than a courier.”

“You couldn’t think of another way?”

She arched an eyebrow.

“So- a package, delivered to this building, or a file sent to the general inquires inbox for Stark Industries, addressed directly to you, from an unknown sender- wouldn’t have been lost in the system?”

Despite the lingering irritation, he could admit that she had a point.

And at least she hadn’t tried to hack JARVIS, or threatened to taser him, or ripped the arc reactor out of his chest, or thrown him through a window.

All in all, this break-in was probably in his top three.

Tony flicked his hands into a shrug, keeping his expression blank and blithe.

“Alright. Let’s say I buy that.” He did buy it, but she didn’t need to know that yet. “You wanna tell me what this really is?”

He saw the subtle shift in her eyes, becoming a little shrewder, a touch sharper- and a little pleased.

She pulled up one shoulder.

“A gift? Or a bribe, perhaps. Gratitude. Diplomacy. A resumé.”

“What, you’re in the market for a job?”

The quip was as pithy as he intended, but in the split second that followed- huh.

Actually.

That wasn’t a terrible idea.

Tony acknowledged that he needed to step back from Iron Man- at least until he could reorganise his head and redraw the lines so that it wasn’t the all-consuming furnace of fear and duty and penance and freedom-safety that it had become- but the work wouldn’t wait. The planet was on a deadline, and Tony had more resources than most to pull the necessary defences together. Having good people on board, who could keep his projects ticking over while he reorientated, was essential.

And Alethia knew. She had recognised the monsters lurking in the dark between the stars, and had looked for someone to warn when she decided that Fury couldn’t be trusted to listen.

And then there was the truth in all things, and cannot lie aspect. That was a hell of an ace up Earth’s collective sleeve- if, if, if-

“I don’t need a job, Dr Stark. What I need is an ally.” Alethia spoke as clear and calm as daybreak upon the mountains. “We both do. As many as we can get.”

Tony swallowed, carefully.

He turned his head to look at the screens, grappling down the swoop of intermingled terror and relief.

“So this is your pitch.”

“I was working on other areas, but- I saw the news,” Alethia said mildly. “The bombings. Malibu.”

She hesitated.

“I was worried.”

Tony flicked a slightly surprised glance back at her.

Alethia’s gaze was on the screens, inscrutable.

There was a note of quiet sincerity in her voice that rattled something within him, like marbles in a jar.

“Well.” Tony began, turning back towards the illuminated text. “I’ve come back from the dead before.”

“Even so.” She demurred. “You were- you were kind to me. I didn’t forget that. So I was glad to find that you were alright. Then I found out about AIM, and Extremis, and I- thought you could use the assistance.”

Tony didn’t know what to say.

He still couldn’t decide, even after a moment to reboot.

Instead, he deflected.

“I knew you weren’t an engineer.”

“Hm?”

Tony flicked a practiced, flippant gesture at the screens- a quick upturn of his palm, fingers loosely curled- turning away.

“Back then. The instructions you provided for the Tesseract device- I mean, we talked about it at the time. Hot garbage, right? Intentional hot garbage, but still. There was a solid working understanding of the physics and the mechanics, but it wasn’t written by someone au fait with the field. There are things that you only learn if you’ve studied it, read the books, learned how to speak the language. It’s all in the common practice- the jargon, the shorthand. That was missing, from your papers. There were a few pieces, but not enough. You’re not an engineer.”

Tony turned to face her, expression a flat, inscrutable mask.

“You are a doctor, though.”

Alethia didn’t flinch.

He would expect nothing less, from someone who had kept secrets from Nicholas Fury and was still walking around, doing as she pleased.

“This,” Tony raised a finger to his shoulder-line, indicating the screens behind him. “Is perfect. Flawless. You could send this for peer review and get it published in The Lancet.”

A chink appeared in Alethia’s expression- something that she had allowed to break through, intense as sunlight striking on a shard of glass.

Pride.

It was earned. As far as Tony could tell, she had whipped up the antiserum formula within a matter of days; any sane research institute or private company on the planet, including the medical subsidiaries of Stark Industries, would be putting a bounty on her corporate headhunt if they knew.

Blasé as he could afford to be with money, however, Tony rarely made a purchase without knowing the price.

“So. What are you?” He paced back towards her, gathering a slow momentum like the wind of a crank, closing in. “Biochem? Cellular biology? Genetics? What’s your speciality?”

Alethia smiled.

“Neurosurgery.”

Tony’s brow twitched at the admission, taken aback.

He wasn’t actually expecting a straight answer. He wasn’t expecting that answer.

And he wasn’t expecting its wistfulness.

“You’re a brain surgeon?”

She let out a short laugh.

“I should probably introduce myself.” An incandescent, media-ready smile lit up her features, relaxed and confident. “Dr Astrid North, MD.”

Tony stilled.

That was her name, he could tell. Not an alias.

Tony quickly calculated the risk, that she was taking.

“Date of birth recorded as the twenty-ninth of February, 1988,” she continued, as though this time she was actually reciting and submitting her résumé for consideration. “Graduated from Columbia in the class of ’03, summa cum laude, completed my neurosurgical residency in 2010. I also worked under the surnames Stephenson and Stephensdottir- spelt like the doctorate, not like the super-soldier. There should be records of me available here in New York, as well as the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, and Brazil.”

Tony could feel the staccato of his heart, stuttering behind the arc reactor, a thrum of anticipation.

“Hm. SHIELD know any of this?”

Alethia’s- Astrid’s- lip curled with a hint of contempt.

“No.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

She lifted her shoulder. “I thought you’d want an insurance policy.”

“And what have I done to earn that?”

“You listened.”

“I passed the test,” Tony inferred. “That’s why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I would like to trust you,” Astrid said coolly, “and because I think there’s a more than fair probability that I can. And- because I would like you to trust me. Even if only enough to work together.”

Tony observed her for a few dragging seconds.

“What’s your endgame?” He challenged. “You told me back then that you’re not an altruist.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“Then why? What’s in it for you?”

Her brow tensed slightly.

“Enlightened self-interest? Or, is I don’t want the planet I currently live on to be destroyed insufficient for you?”

“Eh, plenty of people don’t find it compelling. Look at climate change.”

Astrid’s lips parted to reply- before she grimaced, glancing aside in admission.

“Alright, fair point.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But maybe I’m just more circumspect.”

“Or you have another reason.”

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a slow blink.

“You are being very obstinate about this.”

“You know, I don’t actually care, what your actual reason is,” Tony blurted out, sharp and caustic as battery acid, a sudden flare of anger and impatience shoving him forwards, “because you’re right. We need allies. Including each other. So I’m willing to work with your reason why. But only if I know what it is.”

The moment that Tony stopped speaking, he became aware of how Astrid was looking at him.

Tony felt like he was being taken apart, disassembled, the cover plate pulled off to check the hardware.

Truth in all things.

She hummed, soft in the back of her throat. It was the kind that he could feel in his sternum, even with most of it carved away for the arc reactor.

“Alright,” she said softly. “Fair’s fair.”

She straightened, looking away.

“There is- someone.” She said carefully. “Someone that I love.”

Tony blinked.

It was like the twist of a kaleidoscope, patterns reforming, in four simple words.

“And the one responsible for- that-” Astrid snapped a finger heavenwards, her entire being smouldering with a leashed, soul-deep hatred, “took them, at their most vulnerable. Captured them. Tortured them. For months. Years. Twisted their memories, tainted their emotions, and manipulated their pain until they no longer knew where they ended, and the sceptre began. They barely kept enough of themselves to ruin it all, and break free of the control.”

Tony felt a muscle in his bicep and jaw twitch, flicking an appraising, calculating look across her.

Interesting.

“The one that I love will be hunted as a traitor. Or, as a failure- I don’t think it matters, and I don’t care. It all has the same end. What matters is that the one I love will never be safe, until and unless that is no longer a threat.”

Astrid dropped her hand, meeting his eyes addressing him with a tone of complete, terrifying certainty.

“I have decided that it is not going to be a threat.”

The floor of Tony’s stomach dropped out, the room seeming to tilt.

He was suddenly struck with a strange thought- like some survival instinct coded into his evolutionary ancestry, tapping at his nerve endings, lingering like a chill in the vertebrae of his neck. It was the feeling that he was looking at something ancient, and angered- half-mad and unhinged and doing an admirable job of containing itself to its human skin.

He realised, in a split second, that Astrid was probably something not entirely human.

And she was baring her teeth at whatever was threatening to swallow Earth whole.

Fuck it. He could work with this.

“All of the sake of love?” Tony asked.

He took pride in the fact that his cadence was even-keeled, despite the stagger of his pulse.

A humourless, self-deprecating smile wrung through her features.

“You can laugh,” Astrid told him, rueful and without rancour. “I know how I must sound.”

Tony forced himself to shrug, nonchalantly. “I’ve heard worse.”

And he had. Tony had been worse. He had cut deals with worse, because he was a realist, and anyone pursuing utopia had to be willing to drag themselves through purgatory first.

After a long moment, Tony inhaled sharply, pulling his shoulders back.

“Okay,” he said powerfully. “If this is a bluff? I’m calling it. Cards on the table.”

A spark ignited behind Astrid’s eyes, like a struck match.

“Pepper’s been injected with Extremis,” he continued brusquely, “I need to get her stable, along with any other test subjects that AIM decided to turn into literal walking time bombs. That’s why you gave me these papers, right? You thought I could use it, and I can. So let’s get to it. You in?”

Astrid looked startled- before her entire demeanour snapped into a honed, clinical focus.

“Wh- are you monitoring cortisol levels? Internal temperature, heartrate, WBC-?”

“Per doctor’s orders.” Tony flicked his head towards the reams of detailed medical instructions, listed out on the glass. “Followed your procedures to the letter. We’re tracking down anyone else who might have taken part in clinical trials, but it looks like there were a limited number, at least.”

Astrid tugged up her sleeves with an efficient pinch of fabric, pulling the soft knit clear of her wrists and forearms. “How many potential patients?”

“Caps out at a dozen, maybe.”

“The antiserum? You’ve started synthesising it?”

“As we speak, lab’s running on auto.”

“How much?”

“About two hundred and fifty milligrams, in the first batch.”

“Not enough. Triple it. And quintuple it for the others, per patient. I don’t want to be caught out with less than we need. Have you started on the round of pre-antiserum IV fluids?”

“About three hours ago.”

“And no adverse effects, contraindications?”

“Nada. Smooth sailing, all in line with where you said we should be by now.”

“Good, but keep Miss Potts closely monitored. And we’ll still need to test the antiserum on a live tissue sample, if possible.”

“I’ll get on it.”

Tony swiped two fingers down through the air, dismissing the pages on the screens, the room dimming slightly as they slid away.

“If this works,” he said, his enunciation crisp, “we can talk.” In one fluid motion, Tony plucked a StarkPad from amongst the chaos of the workbenches, flipping it in his grip to hold it, outstretched, within her reach. “Sound good, doctor?”

Astrid smiled, light and wild, and Tony felt his decision settle in his chest with a feeling of rightness.

This could work.

She took the tablet.

“Lead the way, doctor.”

Astrid made an addition to her list.

Flour.

50 weeks and 3 days out

Brunnhilde would be the first to admit that she was not made for subterfuge.

She was a woman of brash, blunt action, more inclined to punch her way straight through her problems that to deconstruct them. As such, her vocation suited her. The Valkyrie were the vanguard, the cavalry, the elite corps, revered shieldmaidens who cleared the field with a swift, graceful brutality that was immortalised in legend and song and carving.

They had been thralls, once. Slaves.

Most of Asgard had forgotten that.

As war raged across the Nine, they had been appropriated by the throne- a form of tax levy, on the wealthy of Asgard- and dispatched to the battlefield in the wake of Asgard’s armies, to collect corpses from the slurry. Choosers of the slain, the golden-plated Einherjar snickered into their cups, leering over the rims.

Then there was a shortage of disposable warm bodies. It had seen weapons pressed into their hands, shoved to the front lines to fill out the ranks.

Against all expectation, the Valkyrie had fought. The fought, and lived, and bought victory to Asgard.

In recognition of their deeds, Bor had purchased their freedom. The Valkyrie became the pride of Asgard, a symbol of its might, arrayed in battle armour of bright, sun-catching pearl-white and star-silver.

Their origins were probably why the Valkyrie could be found working, even in peacetime- conducting funerary rites, serving at great state occasions, maintaining Folkvang- while the Einherjar regressed into nothing more than decorative doorstops scattered throughout Gladsheim.

Brunnhilde had once remarked as such to Loki. Months later, he had presented her with a gilded doorstop for her nameday, crafted into the shape of an Einherjar in full regalia.

It had sent Brunnhilde into a fit of delighted, undignified cackles.

I’m calling him Sigurd, she declared with a feral grin.

Ah, he’s not going to last a week, Loki had commented, clicking his tongue with a convincing veneer of faux-pity.

Even now, few if any of Brunnhilde’s sisters were of noble blood or wealthy backgrounds. Most of them came from labouring families, apprenticed in a trade before they turned old enough to apply to the corps, and they bought their skills to Folkvang. The Valkyrie’s halls, sheltered in a chilled, fertile basin in the mountains, was almost entirely self-sufficient thanks to their collective knowledge. They raised fields of wheat and flax, milled their own flour and spun their own linen, wove and baked and built, felled timber and hunted and fished, tanned leather and cured meat, cut stone and dug wells, even kept bees and pressed oil and fermented wine and made candles.

And then there was the lace.

A few girls who knew how to weave had taken it up, transforming thread into pretty swatches of aerated cloth. They had begun teaching the craft to a few others, when they showed interest. Then the pastime became an additional source of income, to supplement the stipend provided by the crown.

And within a few centuries, Valkyrie lace was considered amongst the most exquisite craftsmanship in all the Nine. A single spool of inch-wide trim commanded a small fortune. When a Valkyrie was wed, it was customary for her sisters to spend the year and a day between engagement and marriage- or longer, if they saw the union coming- making as many yards of lace as they could manage, as her dowry.

Brunnhilde loved her sisters, admired their work, and hated lacemaking with a virulence that she usually reserved for bilgesnipe and strutting lordlings who thought that bedding a Valkyrie was a notch in their gilded belt.

Fortunately, she also had absolutely no talent for it. The others had quickly banished her from their tatting pillows and needles and bobbins, gently shoving her off towards work that actually made sense to her.

And Brunnhilde was content to have nothing to do with it. She honestly couldn’t understand what the others envisioned in the countless threads, or why crossing one here or knotting another there would somehow create a magnificently intricate motif several thousand more motions later, even if she was capable of appreciating the result.

In that sense, subterfuge reminded her of lacework.

She couldn’t see all of the threads, where they were leading, or how they locked together into a single bolt of woven fibre and air- but Loki so clearly knew exactly how each and every loop and twist and knot would build outwards, and took quiet satisfaction in seeing each one tighten into place, like a miniature noose.

There was an aching patience to it, each miniscule snag changing the fall of the delicate mesh, and Brunnhilde was often caught by the impulse to just hack her way through it.

She didn’t.

Instead, she did exactly as he asked.

Asgard underestimates him, a memory whispered- that of a warm voice, accompanied by a smile that darkened the eyes above it into amber. Or thinks it sees him, or thinks it knows what it’s looking at. A trick of the light. A shadow on glass. It is a mistake, you know.

The darkened eyes had begun to glow, instead, when they saw that Brunnhilde was paying attention.

I think he might be the most real person that I have ever met.

“I was surprised,” Loki admitted, on a low, distracted hum, “that you didn’t ask.”

The dungeons were quiet, at least in the wing where Loki was being held. It felt like an archive, a place for lost and forgotten things to be kept, shelved and stored out of sight until they were needed- the air settled as silt on the bottom of a riverbed, barely stirring with the sparse rounds of the guards.

Brunnhilde had counted eleven weaknesses that she could exploit, if it came to it.

She would have counted three dozen more in a fraction of the time.

She felt her heart clench strangely. It was the feeling of old scar tissue, untouched for so long, flexing and moving once more.

She and Loki were seated at the front of his cell, arranged parallel against the golden barrier on either side. Swathed in worn, nondescript suedes, Brunnhilde slouched on the stone steps, bare shoulder shoved against the forcefield; the air felt thicker the closer she came to the curtain of spellwork, like magnetic resistance, but she found herself leaning her weight into it, defiant and testing, like pressing her thumb down on a new bruise.

On the other side, Loki was sorting through several sheaves of handwritten notes, stacks surrounding him like panes in a half-rose window. His black hair was braided back at his crown, dressed in soft leathers and deep green linens and lightweight boots, finely made with immaculate quality, but far simpler than would be expected of an Asgardian prince- at least outside of the privacy of the residential wings of the palace.

Brunnhilde knew that he could have dressed himself in illusions, if he wished.

The choice not to was- interesting. In a way that she refused to think about.

There were a lot of things she refused to think about, with regards to Loki.

Not when it made her feel all those mollusc-soft sentiments that she had decided to kill years ago, for her own survival, after the gold plating of Asgard had begun to flake in her eyes.

In that, at least, she knew they were both in good company.

“I asked about this,” Brunnhilde countered his comment, tapping a nail against the arm ring that sat flush against the curve of her bicep. It was a deceptively simple band of brass, seeming to blend in against her, unremarkable regardless of lighting. Between it, and Loki’s magic, they were shielded from the Gatekeeper’s watch- Loki as a glaring lacuna in the script, a blank space, and Brunnhilde as though from behind a fine, misting rain, the specifics blurred out of focus.

Loki rolled his eyes, in that prissy, superior manner that left Brunnhilde more amused than irritated, these days.

“Yes, about whether it would turn your skin orange or set you spitting toads, of all things.”

“It was a valid concern, knowing you.”

“Hm.” There was a slight upturn at the corner of Loki’s mouth- the closest thing to agreement that she would probably wrest out of him.

Brunnhilde slipped loose a smirk.

“I didn’t bother asking,” she admitted, in a crisp-consonant drawl, “because I knew that I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. It would be like asking to read a contract before I sign, when I don’t know the language it’s written in.”

Loki’s eyes sliced up from the papers, without lifting his head, fixing her with a serpentine gaze.

“You do yourself a disservice, Brunn.”

Brunnhilde paused, a little surprised by his quiet vehemence.

She shrugged it away.

“This is just not something I’m suited for. Politics and subterfuge and spywork. Moving the pieces by moving entirely different ones, lightyears away. It’s like my sisters, and their lacework,” she admitted blithely. “I understand the theory. But even if you had told me where this was going, I wouldn’t know enough to tell if you were lying.”

But.

Brunnhilde wasn’t entirely ignorant to Loki’s plans. She had made certain of it.

She had heard the gossip, on dozens of planets across the Nine. The arm ring not only shielded her from Heimdall’s sight, but also from the perils of using the secret passageways that were specked across Asgard- allowing her to move freely between worlds, at Loki’s direction.

Steadily, disparate pieces and seemingly unconnected incidents were coalescing, into a clear picture.

Muspelheim had struck an unexpected trade deal with Ria. When the revival of the disused trade route had attracted Marauders and Ravagers, a new defence coalition had formed, stationed at crucial waypoints to prevent piracy and smuggling.

The Crown Prince of Vanaheim had headed a diplomatic envoy to Alfheim. By the time he had arrived, Niflheim’s queen just so happened to be also be visiting her fellow monarch. The triumvirate meeting occurred without a single Asgardian dignitary present.

A few weeks later, the realm of the light elves had also hosted several representatives of dwarven guilds.

The Nova-Kree War was turning cold. The Nine had become neutral ground. The Nova Corps had offered aid to those on the outskirts and most affected by raids, and had sent engineers to retrofit their older, short-haul vessels with swifter engines and stronger defences. The Kree were in tentative talks with Nidarvellir, to have the dwarves invest in maintaining local jump points, in exchange for Kree arms to protect their merchant fleets.

The realms were moving, like the interlocking turn of dials and gears. And for the first time in millennia, Asgard was excluded from its workings.

And it was Loki’s doing.

At his instruction, Brunnhilde had bribed and baited Ravagers to harass Nidarvellir trade routes. She had placed bets at various ports, on the likelihood of a Kree civil war. She had sold information on Knowhere, changed figures on shipping manifestos, stirred up bar fights and complained about the export tax on goods out of Ria, destroyed shipments and switched documents and delayed correspondence, paid off and blackmailed and persuaded civil servants and stewards and aides into suggesting or omitting a minor detail from a report, or handing a project to a different department.

Brunnhilde was the stage hand in a great, orchestrated play. The Nine were being gently herded into a strengthening current- one that was looking outwards, into a galaxy where the balance of power was shifting.

It was a coup.

And Loki hadn’t even left his cell.

Brunnhilde refused to be impressed.

After a moment, she realised that Loki was looking at her with a glinting amusement.

It wasn’t the kind that was intended to mock, but rather the prelude to bringing her in on the joke.

“Of course you can’t see where this is going, Brunn,” he said softly. “You’re the needle.”

A memory clicked into place, flickering in like guttering lamplight.

There was a bolster pillow in her lap, a lace pad template pinned atop it, embroidery needle gripped uncertain and rigid between her forefinger and thumb. The chatter and bickering and teasing of her sisters was a cloud of ambient sound that seemed to glow like nimbus, in the apple-golden autumn afternoon.

A warm shoulder brushed near her own.

Gently, Brunn! A voice laughed. Treat your needle with respect. Relax your hand. The needle can feel where it needs to go- you’re just guiding it.

This is a terrible idea, Brunnhilde had muttered. We all remember what happened when Svanhit tried to teach me.

Stay away from my bobbins, Brunn! Came a sharp call from across the hall, to a few snickers. Olrun, Hervor, keep her away!

Brunnhilde had made to wave a vulgar gesture at her, and almost stabbed herself with the needle.

Needlepoint lace is more straightforward, a clear voice interjected. Brunnhilde had looked over to her- the glint of her needle moving in brisk freehand stitches, looping and tightening, all deft skill and focus, one moving part, one thread. You don’t have to keep track of seventy different bobbins, and the order you need to cross or twist them in.

Your prince prefers bobbin lace, doesn’t he? Brunnhilde asked, smirkingly.

Brunnhilde received a gentle, reproachful elbow to the ribs.

A flush, through golden skin, head dipping and pearl-white hair slipping forwards.

Prince Loki has a mind for it, she replied, deliberately and damningly neutral. The dance of it, the complexity- it suits him.

Well, what do you prefer?

She had paused, head cocked.

I like both, I suppose, she hedged. Bobbin lace is essentially weaving- looping the strands together, pulling them into place against each other. It tends to be- lighter, more of a fabric with motifs created inside of it. Layers of opacity. Needle lace is often studier. Like- scaffolding. The pattern is all that there is. And the needle has to work back and back and back to bring it into existence, to make sure it holds in place, knotting back where it has already been.

Her eyes sharpened.

No- I think I prefer bobbin lace. Needle lace is- putting a great deal of trust on just one thing.

Brunnhilde blinked back into the present.

Oh.

Loki had learned some lacemaking. He would have likely received that same explanation, heard the same comparison.

After a moment, she scowled, looking away.

“I still hate lacemaking.”

Loki laughed.

Worlds away, Astrid made a cautious addition to her list, framed in brackets.

(Lace).

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