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She hadn’t expected it, but she hadn’t questioned it, either. Perhaps she should have. And perhaps he had looked a tad familiar. But really, she’d have done it the same regardless.
~~~
It’d been nearly a week since the Corvine had chased them off planet.
It would seem many of Asgard’s allies were little more than fair weather friends. Oh, sure, Loki had been aware some of the lesser races were… dissatisfied with some of Asgard’s policies. But that they’d turn so violently and so rapidly was unexpected. And that they would do so when Asgard was truly in need of friends was… frustrating.
Low on supplies, weeks from the nearest port, tensions were growing and Loki grew tense with it.
He desperately wanted a hot bath.
Alas, the ship’s filtration system was already overburdened. Bathing took second priority to drinking and, so, here they were. If brushing shoulders with the grieving masses hadn’t been bad enough, smelling them was worse.
Loki found his way to one of the smaller storage units in the ship’s aft and spelled the door locked. The heating system, shoddy as it was, didn’t service this section quite so thoroughly, so few Asgardians bothered to come this way. Most of the Sakaaran rebels, too, disliked these halls, but that had more to do with certain stories a certain someone had whispered in their ears. He hadn’t honestly thought it would work, but it would seem the Sakaarans were a superstitious bunch.
The ancient spirit of a wicked woman. Haunting a cargo bay. Really.
He wouldn’t complain. A little time to himself was precisely what he needed.
Needed.
Loki sucked in a lungful of the dusty air, chilly and dank. The aluminum crates had long ago been searched for supplies. Now they stood empty or half filled with useless junk. He left the overhead lights off, relying on the safety lights dotting the grated floor. He wouldn’t need them, in a minute.
He flexed his fingers, joints stiff.
Returning to his Ás form had been harder than he’d expected. He found that it no longer… fit. It was too tight, like shrunken leather constricting his movements, like being wrapped in padding or weighted by rocks. It hurt. Hot and achy and heavy. Maintaining his composure in Thor’s daily meetings, in the mess hall and the common room, during the little chitty small talks people insisted on involving him in when he passed them in the hall, it was excruciating.
He knew what it was. Shifting one’s form was tricky business. Sometimes even dangerous. And holding a foreign form for too long was ill advised. Sorcerers had to practice endurance, stretching their time in another skin from minutes to days to months. Very few could last a year or more. It put a strain on one’s magic and left it sore and tired. And, just like training in body, one needed to let one’s magic rest and recover.
Loki had never felt the strain of changing forms, had assumed his natural gift for the art was to thank. Now he knew, it was because he was always shifted. Changing to a horse or a snake or a Vanr was no different than staying Ás, each one just as alien as the last. Now, though…
Now he felt it. Now that he’d removed Odin’s charm, now that he’d relaxed the grip of his magic, let himself feel what it was like to rest, returning to the skin of the skinny little prince was like lifting a great weight recently dropped.
Loki removed his shoes, his coat, his tunic, stripping to his britches. The air ghosted across his shoulders, the barest breeze stirred up by the chugging ventilation system.
It would be so easy to drop it again. So easy to let his spine straighten and his limbs stretch and his lungs take their fill. But he couldn’t. Not with others watching, not with his place among the Asgardians so precarious. Yes, they knew what he truly was, but knowing a fact and experiencing it was so very different. One could know a flame was hot but to feel it would make you scream.
No. He would keep this an abstract fact for as long as he could.
But if he wanted to keep this to himself he needed time to… to rest.
He let his breath out in a slow stream and loosened the grip on his form. He felt his bones shift, his ribs expanding, his spine stretching, curved horns sprouting from his brow, his skin growing thicker against the cold. Suddenly the dingy echoing cargo hold didn’t feel so dark and uninviting; suddenly it felt down right cozy. Even just the britches he wore, spelled to grow with him, were a bit much in this warmer world. The meager glow of the safety lights flooded the room as his Jotunn eyes adjusted to the dark, a twilight turned brilliant.
He flexed his fingers, joints supple. He rolled his neck, shoulders loose. Ahh, almost as relaxing as a bath.
Though he still wanted a bath.
With a chuckle he began to stretch, touching his toes, reaching for the rafters. He could almost reach them, too, the I-beams just a bit beyond him. He was small for a giant, he knew, but he still dwarfed any other on the ship. (The Beast didn’t count.) He was certain even that pile of rocks couldn’t match his newfound height!
(And it wasn’t cheating to count his horns!)
Limbered up and feeling light, Loki bounced on the balls of his feet, breaking free of the slight film of ice that tried to stick him to the floor, sprinkling snow through the grates. He hadn’t come here only to relax his tired magic. He wanted to experiment with his new… abilities.
Loki had always had an affinity for elemental magic, but it had always been a conscious effort to use it. As a Jotunn, however, ice formed around him whether he willed it or not. And such undisciplined spellwork simply wouldn’t do.
All right, something simple first. He’d seen Jotnar form blades of ice along their forearms. Surely he could do so as well. He closed his eyes and concentrated, conjuring up feelings of cold in his right arm, the biting feel of exposed skin in a winter gale, of plunging a hand in ice water until it nearly burned with chill.
He opened his eyes to find his arm bare. No, not bare, dripping! What frost had been there before had melted!
Loki frowned and shook the slush from his limb. He flexed his fingers. They felt cold. Honestly cold, not his mere imaginings.
How strange. He felt his right arm with his left hand, surprised to find it was noticeable warmer. Hot, even.
Strange indeed.
He hadn’t much time to think on this, however, as a voice spoke up behind him.
“Haven’t seen one of you in a while.”
Loki spun around, eyes wide. Valkyrie stood in the door, one hand wrapped around a bottle and the other resting on the hilt of her sword.
“Been even longer since I killed one.”
Hadn’t he charmed the door? How had she got in without him noticing?
Her hair was smooshed to one side and she rubbed an eye with the back of her wrist. The shield maiden yawned, loudly and with a stretch so wide he could hear her spine pop.
Ah, he should have checked for sleeping dogs before barring the door.
“Valkyrie—“
“Oh, so you know what I am.” She took a swig from the bottle. “So you know you should be scared.”
And then her sword was out, flashing in the half-light as it sought his heart.
“Valkyrie!” He shouted, twisting to the left. Her blade scratched a line of red against his collar bone. “It’s me!”
“That’s nice,” she slurred, turning her swing around for a thrust. Loki hopped back, tucking his stomach in to avoid the point. She responded by slashing upwards towards his face. He straightened just in time to watch the tip sail by his nose.
“You're drunk!”
“Yup!” She lifted the bottle, took a draught, and tossed it to the side. It shattered, empty.
Her sword swung for his throat, his thigh, his chest, giving him little time to think.
How was her aim so good whilst drunk?
He tried to shift his form but it felt like pushing through molasses. He could feel his flesh waver then the sharp pain as he snapped back into place, his magic still exhausted.
Another slash, this time with her short edge. He dodged again and, before she could recover, flung a hand out to grasp her sword arm. His fingers had just brushed her bracer when she spat a spray of pungent liquor in his face. He reared back with a shout, eyes burning.
She laughed. “Hope you like that! It was expensive!”
“You low life slattern!” He shouted, scrubbing at his eyes. “I’m Loki! Loki!”
“Huh,” she huffed. “You do sorta sound like him.”
He heard her shift her stance, readying another thrust. As she lunged he flung himself into a backwards roll. Or, he tried. Halfway through his horns lodged into the slated floor, wrenching his neck and sending the rest of him into an ungainly sprawl. He tried to scramble away from The Valkyrie’s approaching stomp, but his right horn was tangle in the grating, keeping him bowed as his idiot ally bore down.
“Wow!” Valkyrie’s voice wavered as she fought back laughter. “This is pathetic.”
“Pathetic?” He screeched, straining against the floor. “You’re so drunk you can’t recognize your own prince!”
“Not my prince.” She placed a boot between his shoulder blades.
Oh. So she did recognize him. She just didn’t care.
He went still, sensing the point of her sword somewhere above his neck. “Thor—“ he started, swallowed, then tried again. “Thor will be livid. Jotunn or no, I’m still his brother.”
“Really? ‘Cause you keep saying otherwise.”
“I—”
“Oh, shut it.” She shifted her weight down, pushing his breath out, before removing her foot. The sound of sword sliding into scabbard soon followed. “I’m not gonna kill ya.”
“You—you could have fooled me.”
“Well,” she dropped to her knees and grabbed his stuck horn in one hand, a fist full of hair in the other. “I was going to. Thought you were some stowaway from Corvina.” She gave an unpleasant twist and his horn popped free of the grate. She let go and Loki’s head hit the floor with a clunk.
He sat up, massaging his brow. He could already feel the headache. “You didn’t think to wonder why a stowaway wears the face of an Asgardian prince?”
“It’s a little dark in here, m’liege.” She said the honorific like an insult.
He glanced around the cargo hull, bright to his eyes. But she was Ás. She’d be seeing mostly shapes and shadows, not features.
She continued, “But I figured it out after you started whining. You are distinctive like that.”
“I don’t—” he began, but Valkyrie cut him out with a mocking ‘whaa!’
She laughed as he pouted.
“If you knew it was me, why did you press your attack?”
“Because you’re an asshole and you woke me up. What were you doing down here?”
“Nothing.” He’d said that too quickly. She was raising an eyebrow. “I just needed to be alone.”
“Needed some alone time, eh?”
“Not like that!”
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
“You just said it’s too dark to see!”
“I can hear the ice crackling on your cheeks,” she swung a lazy finger through the air, pointing in the general direction of his face.
Loki’s hand flew to his cheek and felt the flaking ice.
“I’m not blushing! This just—just happens!” He hunched into himself, feeling ice brake along his shoulders. If he wasn’t careful he’d end up encased in the stuff.
“Ooohhh!” Valkyrie slapped a hand against her knee. “You came down here to practice!”
“I—”
“I remember now! Thor told me you only found out, like, a year ago.”
“Six years.”
“Like, last year, that you were a frost Giant,” she continued, ignoring him. “Do you even know how to make Rime Armour?”
He didn’t respond, the ice along his arms growing thicker as his belly grew hot.
She fell back on her elbows, head lolling as she laughed. “You don’t even know how to be a Jotunn, do you?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, this is just sad!”
“SHUT UP!” And with his shout the air froze, ice shooting along the floor in thick rivers.
“Woah, calm down, kiddo.” She shifted, cracking herself out of the hoarfrost. “You’ll give yourself heatstroke.”
“Are you stupid, or just that drunk?” Loki panted, pushing himself to hands and knees. “I’ll freeze your flesh off.” The ice by his hands grew thick and pointed. “I’ll leach the warmth from your core until your heart stutters and dies.” He crawled towards her, Ice breaking with each movement before quickly freezing twice as thick. His hands burned as the ice grew about them, as it crept up his arms and along his spine. “I’ll—I’ll…”
“You okay there, Princess?”
Was he? He was—Was. He was… very warm.
“I’m—I am… I…”
“Take a breath; it’s not cold enough in here to be making all that ice.” She didn’t touch him, but brought her hand close, as if to push him down.
Loki complied, his breathing short and quick. Valkyrie rearranged herself to sit cross legged, watching as the ice incasing him slowly melted.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
His eyes snapped up to glare, but she wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Okay,” she said. “First thing? You’re still warm blooded. I should know, I’ve spilt enough Jotnar blood to fill a lake.” He knew the look he wore was less than reassured, but she continued. “You guys don’t have fur but you still walk around half naked in that frozen wasteland you call a planet. How do you think that’s possible?”
“Magic.” He was being petty, but he didn’t care.
“You’re an ass.” She chucked a chunk of ice at his head. “Yeah, magic. But it’s not the same sort Aesir use for the cold. You don’t add enchantments to your clothes or your, I don’t know, skin , to give off heat. You skip all that and just leach the heat directly from your surroundings.” She waved a hand through the air. “Sure, you can use that to make armor and weapons, but it’s meant to stave off the cold first and foremost. Feeling better?”
Loki didn’t respond, his hair dripping sad plops into the grating below. He did feel better, though.
“You know,” Valkyrie said, standing with a stumble. She was still drunk. “I’ve killed a lot of Jotnar—“
“You keep saying that. It’s unnerving.”
“Never got to teach one, though.”
He glanced up at her. Even with her standing, his head still reached her collar bone.
And yet he felt quite small. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see him this way, a Jotunn runt hiding in a dirty storage closet. Clearly not a prince, not even a proper monster, unable to put up even the most paltry fight against a bleary-eyed drunkard. And of all the people to have found him, why had it been Valkyrie? She was already insufferable and now she was standing there while he sat soggy and pathetic on the hold’s floor.
“You going to start whinging again? You look like you’re going to start whinging again.”
Loki slapped his hands against the grating and stood, forcing himself back into his Ás form. It felt like someone had stretched his skin over a barrel, but he managed it.
“My apologies for interrupting your beauty sleep,” Loki spat. He turned his back to her, searching for his discarded garments, the room now dark to his Ás eyes. His muscles cramped with each step, the magic holding his form protesting the movement. Where he tried to walk straight and proud, he found his stride short and jerky.
“You all right, there?” Valkyrie drawled. “Did your ass break when I kicked it?”
“I’m fi--ah!” He yelped, foot catching on a mound of ice and sending him to the floor again. Concentration lost, his form slipped and Loki found himself staring down at blue hands clutching the grating. Valkyrie’s snort echoed in the hold and Loki whipped about to face her. “I don’t need ice to slit your throat,” he snarled.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, striding forward. Compared to him, her drunken swagger was nearly stable. “You know, Asgard wasn’t always fighting with the Jotnar. Sometimes we just glared at each other from across the room. And sometimes…” she flopped down beside him, a small liquor bottle in hand. “We got drunk enough we forgot we hated each other.”
“Where were you hiding that?”
She took a sip around her grin, then handed it over. Loki gave the little decanter a whiff and found his eyes watering at the stinging fumes, but Valkyrie was watching with that haughty, half-lidded smile so he pretended to take a swig before handing it back.
“I knew a couple Jotunn seiðrmasters,” she said. “Well, one master and her dumbass apprentice. That kid was constantly causing problems. Nearly got himself killed by our guys something like… four times. But I liked his master so I helped her smooth things over.”
“You were friends with a Frost Giant?”
“I mean,” Valkyrie paused, waving her drink about as if to stir up her thoughts. “Friends wasn’t really the right word for it. What do you call it when you hate someone but it’s the fun kind of hate?”
“That would describe most of my friendships, to be honest.”
“Then yeah, I guess we were friends.” She chuckled, taking a sip of the liquor. Loki noticed she didn’t show any discomfort at the taste. “Anyway, one time the kid took down the wall of our longhouse, so I arranged for him to pay us back through hard labor. We needed a canal dug. But he was youthful and stupid and wanted to get it done before nightfall. Decided to dig the whole thing with magic.”
“How big was the canal?” Loki was still stinging form Valkyrie’s lackadaisical mockery, but found himself interested in her tale despite himself.
“Oh, two miles? A dozen yards wide.”
“Ah.” He let out a breathy laugh. Digging such a trench with magic was possible in a day, but taxing. Especially for one inexperienced.
“Yeah. The kid practically crawled back to their camp, moaning the whole way. I followed him,” she said, smiling into the dark, then quickly added, “to make sure he didn’t cause any trouble.”
“Oh, of course.”
She ignored his sass and continued. “After Fortrun— that was her name, Fortrun— reamed him out, she did this thing…”
Loki gasped. Valkyrie had slipped a hand to the small of his back, her fingers just barely brushing the skin. Her touch was warm, and sent electric ripples in rivulets along his back and sides. It almost ached where it spread, like heat seeping into knotted muscles. He knew this feeling. Frigg had sometimes done this, melting away the pains of his magics when he was still young and learning.
“I used to do this for-- for a friend, when she overtaxed herself.” Valkyrie trailed her fingers up his back in curling whorls. “It’s easier with you guys, though. Your leylines are right there on your skin. Don’t even have to look for ‘em.”
The raised markings on his skin, the patterns, they were physical manifestations of his energy channels? It had never occurred to him. He knew of some elven tribes who drew tattoos along their leylines, to help visualize their patters for spellwork or, simply, to show off their complexity. That the Jotnar did something similar, or perhaps even were born with it, that was… unexpected.
The light pressure moved up his spine, played along his shoulders, and he could feel the unhappy cramps in his magic loosen. He knew, later, he’d be embarrassed by the situation. Knew that he should feel vulnerable and defensive. But he’d been holding this tension for weeks and, at this moment, all he could care about was how it slowly melted under her touch.
“What in the world have you been doing?” Valkyrie asked, her hand now on the back of his neck beneath his still damp hair. “You’re like one big charley horse.”
“Ehn.” Speaking felt like too much effort.
“Well!” She slapped his back. Unprepared, Loki nearly faceplanted again, but caught himself in time. “I’m still drunk and tired! So, kindly shove off.” And with that she stumbled to her feet and made for the pile of crates she’d first appeared from.
Loki blinked, slightly dazed, but shook the feeling off. He rose, shifting as he did so back to his Ás form. It still felt tight, constricting, but it no longer ached as he moved.
Valkyrie flung herself into a pile of tarps in a darkened corner of the hull, kicking them into a more comfortable arrangement.
“You have a bed,” Loki said, irritation prickling in his stomach as he gathered up his garments. “A nice one.” The one he’d claimed but had been bullied out of.
“And now I’ve got two,” she said, lying with her arms pillowing her head. “So get out of my room.”
Loki stood there a moment, clutching his boots and tunic to his chest, trying to sort out the variety of unpleasant feelings rushing through his chest. He’d come here for privacy and Valkyrie had not only ruined that, but had proceeded to attack and mock him, only to then offer help unsolicited, and now she mocked him again. And as if her boorish attitude weren’t enough, she’d lain him flat like some untrained child. Whilst drunk!
He hated it! He hated feeling so… insignificant. And he especially hated that her Qi work had honestly helped him.
And so he decided to say nothing as he left. He’d find some way to express his displeasure later. But Valkyrie’s voice called after him as he reached the door, “And hey, Loki!”
He paused.
“If you want to practice some more, come by a bit earlier in the evening.”
“Before you’ve drunk yourself into a stupor?” He drawled.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “And bring booze.”
He huffed a laugh. “Pleasant dreams, Vagrant.”
“You too, Lackey.”
Loki dispelled his locking charm and slipped into the corridor beyond. Valkyrie was an uncouth, unpleasant, brute of a woman.
The sort of person he could have fun hating.
~~~
She hadn’t expected him to take her up on her offer, but she hadn’t questioned it, either. Perhaps she should have. He had a tendency to turn her hair pink or spell her boots to squeal with each step, annoying little whelp that he was. But really, she’d have done it the same regardless.