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coldsong“A word, if I may?”
Bucky is patiently cleaning up the slush and debris left by Loki’s arrival into the world—sweeping up ice, mopping up water, putting down sawdust to soak up what can’t be picked up any other way. One might easily assume he was distracted. And he is, a bit, but he’s also one of the greatest assassins the world has ever known, and he wouldn’t still be here if he could be surprised by a presence appearing in the dark corner of his basement. He doesn’t blink at Loki’s voice as it emerges from the shadows, nor does he stop his work, but he does turn his body slightly so the god can see he’s wearing a pistol in a shoulder holster.
“You may,” he says. “But I’d listen better if you’d help clean this shit up. I don’t want mold in the house.”
There’s a pause and a soft chuckle, and Loki comes closer, picking up the dustpan and whisk broom and crouching to pick up some of the damp sawdust. “I suppose I can manage that.”
He looks different, in clean clothing more appropriate to Norway than the armor he arrived in. A cable-knit sweater. Heavy jeans and boots. Gloves with no fingers. His hair is in clean, tight braids, and Bucky can see the golden glint and platinum shimmer of the locks he’s woven into it. His skin, though, is still cobalt blue, etched with runes, and his eyes are still scarlet. There’s something reptilian in that red gaze, he thinks. Alien, but not so far removed as to be incomprehensible. Actually, Bucky finds it reassuring. He’s seen evil wear so many human faces, both pretty and ugly, young and old, male and female. Whether Loki is evil or not, at least he’s a change to the eyes of a terribly jaded old man.
“It’s not here, if the Casket is what you’re looking for,” he says. “It’s hidden.”
The god raises a brow at him, though he doesn’t stop his work. “It’s mine by rights, you know.”
“Not while I’m here, pal. I’ve seen what it can do.”
A few years ago, this would have prompted outrage. The hubris of this man, to claim a magical artifact out of Odin’s store, last held by Odin’s son and the heir to the throne of Jotunheim! Loki is arguably the most qualified person on the planet to handle the Casket, and no good can come of its power in unqualified hands. And yet, the look that crosses Loki’s face is more thoughtful than angry.
“You’ve touched on the topic I came to speak about, actually,” he says. “Not the ownership of the Casket, but the use of it. I expected it to be studied and tapped, in much the way the Tesseract was. Not cracked open in the midst of the battlefield. Certainly not save as a last desperate resort.”
Bucky leans on his mop and looks down at Loki as he primly sweeps the clumps of sawdust into the pan. “Not sure what you define as a last desperate resort, if that fight wasn’t it.”
“A suicide action,” he clarifies. “One with the potential to freeze the entire field of battle and then some. But that’s not what happened, is it? You didn’t control the power well, but you did control it. What do you remember, exactly?”
Bucky is quiet for a moment, part of his brain protesting that he owes no one that answer, certainly not a stranger. But it’s been preying on his mind, too, and there’s a chance Loki may know something he needs. “I heard Steve screaming,” he says. “Grappling with Thanos. I guess…it reminded me of when we were kids. He was always picking fights with someone too big for him, and every time I expected to come in and find him with a broken neck or bleeding out thanks to some asshole with a switchblade.”
“He must’ve dropped the Casket somehow. It was on the ground at my feet, and I was running on instinct. I just picked it up. I think I was thinking I’d throw it at Thanos, but I ended up squeezing the handles instead.”
Loki stands and dumps sawdust into the trash bin, then looks at him for a moment. “And then?”
“I dunno. It was cold.”
“Do you know what Fimbulvetr is, Sargeant Barnes?”
“My name is Bucky.”
Loki gives a huff of annoyance, but it says something that he restates the question anyway: “Do you know what Fimbulvetr is, Bucky? It is the Winter that precedes Raganarok. The power of a thousand killing storms, the herald of the end of days. What you held in your hands was effectively a cold nuclear weapon, and yet when you opened it, the power touched only you and Thanos. And you survived. None of that should be possible. Tell me everything.”
Slowly, Bucky drops the mop handle and moves to the safe where the casket had been kept. He sits and folds his hands in his lap, metal twining with flesh and bone. “I remember freezing. It was like cryosleep, but not. It was dark, and clean, and I felt pressure all over, but it was…it didn’t hurt. Like being crushed, but if felt like a fuckin’ hug. And I saw my face reflected in the ice.”
“Did it look anything like mine?”
Bucky laughs, because that sounds like some kind of weird, impossibly arrogant non-sequitur, but then it clicks in his head. Blue. Everything was blue, and he thought it was because of his eyes failing him, but—yes. Yes, his skin was blue and cracked in the reflection, and it gleamed like clean ice.
His laughter fades, but before he can speak again, Loki’s reached out and grabbed his wrist, quick as a striking snake. Blue fingers lock around the flesh of his right forearm, and he feels a strange, piercing cold. It’s pure reactive adrenaline, the way his metal fist comes up, ready to slam full-force into the godling’s face, but he stops himself before making contact. Because the cobalt color of Loki’s skin is creeping across his own, and the cracks he thought he saw before are reappearing, lines too sharp and even and symmetrical to be fissures. More like tattoos. Or ritual scarification.
“I don’t know how this is possible,” Loki says in a very soft voice. “But somehow here you are, with the skin of a Frost Giant.”
“Blue skin in the cold seems like the kind of thing we would have noticed, growing up,” Steve says weakly.
He arrived only twenty minutes ago, on a helicopter with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Thor is still talking to them, explaining Loki’s presence. Thank the Norns that Banner was there too, really. Otherwise, Iron Man would have likely attacked Loki on sight. This is all driving the point home to the god of how many enemies he’s made among the people of Midgard, but there’s no time to be penitent, even if he were so inclined. If anyone can make a case for cooler heads needing to prevail here, it’s Banner.
At least Rogers is still willing to listen to him.
“You know,” Loki says with bitter humor, “I thought the same thing when I found out about mine.”
Bucky shakes his head. “Army would have noticed something weird in the physical exams. And HYDRA sure as hell would have, if no one else did. It has to have been the serum they used on me.”
Steve stares at him, and Loki thinks he’s never seen a man look so broken-hearted.
“That’s possible. Perhaps not what they used during the War,” Loki ventures. “Though historically there was a Jotun presence in this world. One which Odin’s forces fought around the time of my birth. There may have been corpses left behind, somehow preserved as relics or curiosities. If Hydra had obtained such things, they could have extracted the DNA and blended it into their experiments. They wanted you cold-hardy and stronger than a human.”
“That seems the most likely possibility,” he goes on, ignoring Steve’s expression. “Though it is also possible that they obtained the blood and tissue samples SHIELD took from me in the brief time I was captive, and used them. That would make this a recent addition to your genetic makeup.”
“Not sure that follows,” Bucky says. “They kept me in the cold since the fifties.”
“Christ,” Steve groans softly and rubs both hands across his face. It’s a lot to take in, and not the best time for a paradigm shift to be introduced to them. Loki pities them both, but that will not make his pursuit of this discussion less relentless.
“There is one other possibility,” he says, and clears his throat. “I have had…offspring. In Midgard. It was a long time ago, but-"
“I thought you hated humans,” Steve frowns at him. “All that business about how we’re made to be ruled? How we ‘crave subjugation’?”
“I was more than half out of my mind at the time,” Loki says with a hint of reproach. “I’m not clear on everything I said, let alone what I was thinking when I said it. But why would I want to rule a species I hated?”
“I think Thor-" Steve begins, but Bucky interrupts: “Wait, back up. You had half-human kids. You’re saying I might be your descendant?”
“Potentially,” Loki looks away. “I had one daughter, a very powerful witch. She too had a daughter, and that daughter bore twins. I had kept an eye on them for decades, but I stopped…when one of the twins was stoned to death for sorcery. I…”
He trails off, falls silent, and Bucky winces.
“I should have been there to prevent that,” Loki adds quietly. “But I was not. Add that to the list of my sins. And add also that I could not bear to follow my descendants for a long while after that. I did lose track of the bloodline. So yes, it’s possible.”
He takes a moment to muster himself again, and looks at Bucky. “You may be one of mine, and something HYDRA did simply activated the Jotun DNA. If that is the case…you would be the descendent of Vali.”
The quiet in the room after that statement lingers. It feels heavy and somber, and Bucky doesn’t like it. He looks at Steve’s stricken face and Loki’s solemn one, and clears his throat.
“Well, okay, Gramps,” he says. “What do we do with this information?”
There’s something rewarding about the little grin that parts the dark blue Jotun lips. “At the moment, nothing, I think,” Loki says. “After this battle we propose to fight, there may be time to nail down a real, definitive answer, if you wish. Until then, I relegate the care of the Casket to you. Though I hope it will never again be used here.”
“You just said battle,” Steve says. “What’s left to fight? Thanos is dead, and the Stones are destroyed.”
“Do I detect a note of hope in your voice, Rogers?” Loki is amused. “A fight is always easier than the aftermath of one.”
He goes on: “I have information I can share. The balance in Thor’s world, the Thor we know from the Nexus, has been restored, but at a cost. I can explain how it was done, but I think ultimately I am here to teach you how to lose.”
“That’s something that needs to be taught?” Bucky raises an eyebrow.
Loki shrugs. “For some. I learned only from bitter experience. Death before dishonor is a pretty sentiment, elegant foolishness, a privilege only the mightiest can afford. To lose but survive to fight on—that is the way of those who endure.”
Steve swallows, gaze going soft and distant. “…I used to believe that,” he says softly.
“You did,” Loki tells him, with certainty that makes him do a double-take. “But you turned your back on it.”
“What?”
The god of lies breaks into a faint smile at Steve’s look of surprise. “I know you well enough; and not only from Barton’s reports. You should have been mine.”
Something about his tone gets Bucky’s hackles up. Or maybe it’s just because he’s talking to Steve now, and Bucky isn’t following all of the subtext. Learning how to lose makes sense. He knows how. HYDRA taught him over and over again. Steve, though—well, Captain America won most of his battles, but Steve Rogers didn’t. He lost in every back alley in Brooklyn.
“I don’t see how that makes him yours,” he mutters, but what he’s really saying is I protected him back then and I will do it now: don’t test me, because god or not, grandfather or not, I will take you apart.
“It’s my providence,” Loki explains. “Those who lose. Those who are mocked. The weak, the sly, the ignoble, the unacceptable. The survivors.”
“Steve’s the most noble man I’ve ever known,” Bucky protests.
“Ah, but how many times did he lie to get into the army, again?”
Steve snorts and looks mildly sheepish. “I, uh...I hear what you’re saying, but-"
“But you threw it all away,” the Trickster’s smile drops, and he looks strangely hurt. Bitter. “You let them take your body, your identity, and you became a hero.”
The soldier. The man out of time.
“It was personal.” Steve is startled by the revelation. “That first time I fought you.”
“A noble soldier is Thor’s providence,” Loki says. “Another thing taken from me and given freely to him. As I said before, I was not thinking clearly at that time. A bag of cats, that was Banners phrasing, was it not? He was not inaccurate. But yes. It was personal.”
As excuses go, it’s not the best Steve’s heard, but it still makes him pause, and think, and add that tidbit of information to his assessment of the god. After a minute he nods and says: “For what it’s worth, victory has its own kinds of consequences.”
“Oh? You’ll have to teach me,” says Loki.
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
-Emily Dickinson
((Musical Inspiration))
Bucky is patiently cleaning up the slush and debris left by Loki’s arrival into the world—sweeping up ice, mopping up water, putting down sawdust to soak up what can’t be picked up any other way. One might easily assume he was distracted. And he is, a bit, but he’s also one of the greatest assassins the world has ever known, and he wouldn’t still be here if he could be surprised by a presence appearing in the dark corner of his basement. He doesn’t blink at Loki’s voice as it emerges from the shadows, nor does he stop his work, but he does turn his body slightly so the god can see he’s wearing a pistol in a shoulder holster.
“You may,” he says. “But I’d listen better if you’d help clean this shit up. I don’t want mold in the house.”
There’s a pause and a soft chuckle, and Loki comes closer, picking up the dustpan and whisk broom and crouching to pick up some of the damp sawdust. “I suppose I can manage that.”
He looks different, in clean clothing more appropriate to Norway than the armor he arrived in. A cable-knit sweater. Heavy jeans and boots. Gloves with no fingers. His hair is in clean, tight braids, and Bucky can see the golden glint and platinum shimmer of the locks he’s woven into it. His skin, though, is still cobalt blue, etched with runes, and his eyes are still scarlet. There’s something reptilian in that red gaze, he thinks. Alien, but not so far removed as to be incomprehensible. Actually, Bucky finds it reassuring. He’s seen evil wear so many human faces, both pretty and ugly, young and old, male and female. Whether Loki is evil or not, at least he’s a change to the eyes of a terribly jaded old man.
“It’s not here, if the Casket is what you’re looking for,” he says. “It’s hidden.”
The god raises a brow at him, though he doesn’t stop his work. “It’s mine by rights, you know.”
“Not while I’m here, pal. I’ve seen what it can do.”
A few years ago, this would have prompted outrage. The hubris of this man, to claim a magical artifact out of Odin’s store, last held by Odin’s son and the heir to the throne of Jotunheim! Loki is arguably the most qualified person on the planet to handle the Casket, and no good can come of its power in unqualified hands. And yet, the look that crosses Loki’s face is more thoughtful than angry.
“You’ve touched on the topic I came to speak about, actually,” he says. “Not the ownership of the Casket, but the use of it. I expected it to be studied and tapped, in much the way the Tesseract was. Not cracked open in the midst of the battlefield. Certainly not save as a last desperate resort.”
Bucky leans on his mop and looks down at Loki as he primly sweeps the clumps of sawdust into the pan. “Not sure what you define as a last desperate resort, if that fight wasn’t it.”
“A suicide action,” he clarifies. “One with the potential to freeze the entire field of battle and then some. But that’s not what happened, is it? You didn’t control the power well, but you did control it. What do you remember, exactly?”
Bucky is quiet for a moment, part of his brain protesting that he owes no one that answer, certainly not a stranger. But it’s been preying on his mind, too, and there’s a chance Loki may know something he needs. “I heard Steve screaming,” he says. “Grappling with Thanos. I guess…it reminded me of when we were kids. He was always picking fights with someone too big for him, and every time I expected to come in and find him with a broken neck or bleeding out thanks to some asshole with a switchblade.”
“He must’ve dropped the Casket somehow. It was on the ground at my feet, and I was running on instinct. I just picked it up. I think I was thinking I’d throw it at Thanos, but I ended up squeezing the handles instead.”
Loki stands and dumps sawdust into the trash bin, then looks at him for a moment. “And then?”
“I dunno. It was cold.”
“Do you know what Fimbulvetr is, Sargeant Barnes?”
“My name is Bucky.”
Loki gives a huff of annoyance, but it says something that he restates the question anyway: “Do you know what Fimbulvetr is, Bucky? It is the Winter that precedes Raganarok. The power of a thousand killing storms, the herald of the end of days. What you held in your hands was effectively a cold nuclear weapon, and yet when you opened it, the power touched only you and Thanos. And you survived. None of that should be possible. Tell me everything.”
Slowly, Bucky drops the mop handle and moves to the safe where the casket had been kept. He sits and folds his hands in his lap, metal twining with flesh and bone. “I remember freezing. It was like cryosleep, but not. It was dark, and clean, and I felt pressure all over, but it was…it didn’t hurt. Like being crushed, but if felt like a fuckin’ hug. And I saw my face reflected in the ice.”
“Did it look anything like mine?”
Bucky laughs, because that sounds like some kind of weird, impossibly arrogant non-sequitur, but then it clicks in his head. Blue. Everything was blue, and he thought it was because of his eyes failing him, but—yes. Yes, his skin was blue and cracked in the reflection, and it gleamed like clean ice.
His laughter fades, but before he can speak again, Loki’s reached out and grabbed his wrist, quick as a striking snake. Blue fingers lock around the flesh of his right forearm, and he feels a strange, piercing cold. It’s pure reactive adrenaline, the way his metal fist comes up, ready to slam full-force into the godling’s face, but he stops himself before making contact. Because the cobalt color of Loki’s skin is creeping across his own, and the cracks he thought he saw before are reappearing, lines too sharp and even and symmetrical to be fissures. More like tattoos. Or ritual scarification.
“I don’t know how this is possible,” Loki says in a very soft voice. “But somehow here you are, with the skin of a Frost Giant.”
“Blue skin in the cold seems like the kind of thing we would have noticed, growing up,” Steve says weakly.
He arrived only twenty minutes ago, on a helicopter with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Thor is still talking to them, explaining Loki’s presence. Thank the Norns that Banner was there too, really. Otherwise, Iron Man would have likely attacked Loki on sight. This is all driving the point home to the god of how many enemies he’s made among the people of Midgard, but there’s no time to be penitent, even if he were so inclined. If anyone can make a case for cooler heads needing to prevail here, it’s Banner.
At least Rogers is still willing to listen to him.
“You know,” Loki says with bitter humor, “I thought the same thing when I found out about mine.”
Bucky shakes his head. “Army would have noticed something weird in the physical exams. And HYDRA sure as hell would have, if no one else did. It has to have been the serum they used on me.”
Steve stares at him, and Loki thinks he’s never seen a man look so broken-hearted.
“That’s possible. Perhaps not what they used during the War,” Loki ventures. “Though historically there was a Jotun presence in this world. One which Odin’s forces fought around the time of my birth. There may have been corpses left behind, somehow preserved as relics or curiosities. If Hydra had obtained such things, they could have extracted the DNA and blended it into their experiments. They wanted you cold-hardy and stronger than a human.”
“That seems the most likely possibility,” he goes on, ignoring Steve’s expression. “Though it is also possible that they obtained the blood and tissue samples SHIELD took from me in the brief time I was captive, and used them. That would make this a recent addition to your genetic makeup.”
“Not sure that follows,” Bucky says. “They kept me in the cold since the fifties.”
“Christ,” Steve groans softly and rubs both hands across his face. It’s a lot to take in, and not the best time for a paradigm shift to be introduced to them. Loki pities them both, but that will not make his pursuit of this discussion less relentless.
“There is one other possibility,” he says, and clears his throat. “I have had…offspring. In Midgard. It was a long time ago, but-"
“I thought you hated humans,” Steve frowns at him. “All that business about how we’re made to be ruled? How we ‘crave subjugation’?”
“I was more than half out of my mind at the time,” Loki says with a hint of reproach. “I’m not clear on everything I said, let alone what I was thinking when I said it. But why would I want to rule a species I hated?”
“I think Thor-" Steve begins, but Bucky interrupts: “Wait, back up. You had half-human kids. You’re saying I might be your descendant?”
“Potentially,” Loki looks away. “I had one daughter, a very powerful witch. She too had a daughter, and that daughter bore twins. I had kept an eye on them for decades, but I stopped…when one of the twins was stoned to death for sorcery. I…”
He trails off, falls silent, and Bucky winces.
“I should have been there to prevent that,” Loki adds quietly. “But I was not. Add that to the list of my sins. And add also that I could not bear to follow my descendants for a long while after that. I did lose track of the bloodline. So yes, it’s possible.”
He takes a moment to muster himself again, and looks at Bucky. “You may be one of mine, and something HYDRA did simply activated the Jotun DNA. If that is the case…you would be the descendent of Vali.”
The quiet in the room after that statement lingers. It feels heavy and somber, and Bucky doesn’t like it. He looks at Steve’s stricken face and Loki’s solemn one, and clears his throat.
“Well, okay, Gramps,” he says. “What do we do with this information?”
There’s something rewarding about the little grin that parts the dark blue Jotun lips. “At the moment, nothing, I think,” Loki says. “After this battle we propose to fight, there may be time to nail down a real, definitive answer, if you wish. Until then, I relegate the care of the Casket to you. Though I hope it will never again be used here.”
“You just said battle,” Steve says. “What’s left to fight? Thanos is dead, and the Stones are destroyed.”
“Do I detect a note of hope in your voice, Rogers?” Loki is amused. “A fight is always easier than the aftermath of one.”
He goes on: “I have information I can share. The balance in Thor’s world, the Thor we know from the Nexus, has been restored, but at a cost. I can explain how it was done, but I think ultimately I am here to teach you how to lose.”
“That’s something that needs to be taught?” Bucky raises an eyebrow.
Loki shrugs. “For some. I learned only from bitter experience. Death before dishonor is a pretty sentiment, elegant foolishness, a privilege only the mightiest can afford. To lose but survive to fight on—that is the way of those who endure.”
Steve swallows, gaze going soft and distant. “…I used to believe that,” he says softly.
“You did,” Loki tells him, with certainty that makes him do a double-take. “But you turned your back on it.”
“What?”
The god of lies breaks into a faint smile at Steve’s look of surprise. “I know you well enough; and not only from Barton’s reports. You should have been mine.”
Something about his tone gets Bucky’s hackles up. Or maybe it’s just because he’s talking to Steve now, and Bucky isn’t following all of the subtext. Learning how to lose makes sense. He knows how. HYDRA taught him over and over again. Steve, though—well, Captain America won most of his battles, but Steve Rogers didn’t. He lost in every back alley in Brooklyn.
“I don’t see how that makes him yours,” he mutters, but what he’s really saying is I protected him back then and I will do it now: don’t test me, because god or not, grandfather or not, I will take you apart.
“It’s my providence,” Loki explains. “Those who lose. Those who are mocked. The weak, the sly, the ignoble, the unacceptable. The survivors.”
“Steve’s the most noble man I’ve ever known,” Bucky protests.
“Ah, but how many times did he lie to get into the army, again?”
Steve snorts and looks mildly sheepish. “I, uh...I hear what you’re saying, but-"
“But you threw it all away,” the Trickster’s smile drops, and he looks strangely hurt. Bitter. “You let them take your body, your identity, and you became a hero.”
The soldier. The man out of time.
“It was personal.” Steve is startled by the revelation. “That first time I fought you.”
“A noble soldier is Thor’s providence,” Loki says. “Another thing taken from me and given freely to him. As I said before, I was not thinking clearly at that time. A bag of cats, that was Banners phrasing, was it not? He was not inaccurate. But yes. It was personal.”
As excuses go, it’s not the best Steve’s heard, but it still makes him pause, and think, and add that tidbit of information to his assessment of the god. After a minute he nods and says: “For what it’s worth, victory has its own kinds of consequences.”
“Oh? You’ll have to teach me,” says Loki.
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
-Emily Dickinson
((Musical Inspiration))