aloft, by wingbeat

[purposeful_glory]

Loki learns to become a bird.

She can be only one sort of bird, a swift, bad at takeoff from the ground but tireless and quick in the air - and who needs to take off from the ground when the transformation leaves one six feet in the air from a standing start? It would be nearly as hard to add another creature to this spell's arsenal as it was to manage the swift in the first place. She is satisfied with the bird for now; she slips out of the palace and flies, invisible, for hours, and lets Thor tease her about the assignations that must have kept her up late and left her tired in the morning.

(She sometimes has assignations too, but fewer with the first blush of hormonal need worn away. Sometimes Sigyn, sometimes whoever else. Mostly: flying.)

A few months after she has begun to spend time as a bird (and picked up the idea of teleportation, which will be desperately difficult but not, she thinks, outside her reach) there is a parade. They have these every few decades, on the bicentennial or centennial anniversaries of things. The queen, the king, the princesses, a lot of neatly marching warriors, decorative performers with competent dance steps and pleasing voices and desperately incompetent illusions, all winding around in a slow trek around the capital city to be looked at and wave.

It is somehow even duller to sit in a parade and wave and smile when she could be being a bird.

But she can't, not really, so she sits, smiles, tries to remember without checking her notes what this is the twenty-seventh centennial of exactly, waves her hand at the crowd.

And then there's a crackling burst of light and Frigg, the king, her father, has collapsed from their vehicle to the street.

The smoking staff of power aimed at them is just barely visible in the distance among the crowd. Thor has already seized her hammer; Thor will handle that -

Loki leaps after her father, to duck another blast, to see the extent of the injury. "HEALER!" she cries. "IS THERE A HEALER?"

Comments

[einridi]

"You've captured her well enough," says Thor, uncharacteristically serious and unhappy for having just been in a fight. "Is Father—?"

[purposeful_glory]

"He's alive. I am - expecting to be called away. I suppose I can leave Lævateinn."

[einridi]

She sighs with relief, then frowns with concern. "Called away...?"

[purposeful_glory]

Loki looks over her shoulder at Odin.

[einridi]

Thor follows the look.

Odin is glaring.

Frigg is getting to his feet, totally uninjured despite the large hole burned through his obviously-not-protective-enough enchanted clothing.

Thor... is confused.

[purposeful_glory]

"If she doesn't give me a chance to explain you can ask Sigyn," Loki murmurs.

She takes her hand off Lævateinn where it pins the assassin's accomplice, keeps her hands visible. Looks apologetically relieved at Frigg.

[einridi]

Frigg climbs back onto the vehicle and stands beside his queen. Guards surround the vehicle.

"Are the attackers caught?" calls Odin.

"Aye, Mother," Thor calls back.

Odin gives an order to some guards, who push through the crowd to surround the captured assassins. Out loud in her public-speaking voice, she says, "The attack has failed. The king is healed. We return to the palace. Come, Thor, Loki. Guards, bring the prisoners."

Thor... is still very confused. Some of the guards look at Loki with suspicion as they collect the prisoners, but no one interferes with her.

[purposeful_glory]

When the prisoners are transferred to non-Lævateinn-based methods of capture Loki retrieves her blade and puts it back in its carrying-around shape and comes as called.

[einridi]

Thor gets an approving nod from their mother when she arrives back at the vehicle. Loki gets summarily ignored. Thor darts a confused glance at her sister, but doesn't give voice to any actual questions on the way back to the palace.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki sits quietly and wonders just how bad an idea it would be to just fly far, far away -

[einridi]

And Odin remains quietly seething and Thor remains quietly bewildered and Frigg remains quietly concerned all the way back to the palace, where the guards take the prisoners away and the royal family are left alone together.

"Loki," glowers Odin. "Have you anything to say for yourself?"

[purposeful_glory]

Loki has so many things to say for herself. I'm not sorry. But for the affection I bear my father you would be a widow. I have never for a moment been the daughter you wanted and it's time you accepted that. I wish they'd been aiming at you, I wouldn't have saved you. Mama, mama, look what I can do -

Does she have anything wise to say for herself?

"I decided a long time ago that I would rather he live and despise me than die not knowing he could have been saved, if ever it came to that."

[einridi]

"I don't despise you," murmurs Frigg. Odin glares at him.

"What...?" says Thor, and then seems unable to finish her sentence.

Frigg sighs. "Loki used magic to heal me of what would have been a mortal wound."

"...Sister...?" says Thor, conflictedly confused and unhappy.

[purposeful_glory]

"No one else stepped forward. I hadn't thought we were so short on lesser healers," murmurs Loki.

[einridi]

"But... but how did you do it? You're not a sorcerer...?"

[purposeful_glory]

Loki would sort of like to get out of this entire conversation without listing all her spells, but.

"The Tesseract taught me."

[einridi]

Odin growls.

"Perhaps it was meant to be," says Frigg.

Odin growls louder.

"I don't understand," says Thor.

[purposeful_glory]

"When we were little," Loki tells Thor, "I went wandering through the palace and found a door that was meant to be locked, left open, and in it the Tesseract, which I did not know not to touch. And it taught me."

[einridi]

"It taught you sorcery? But - you're my sister. A princess of Asgard. Proper warriors don't do sorcery. But..." she looks at her father. "I..."

[purposeful_glory]

Maybe she'll get it, maybe she won't. Clarifying that it only taught her the alphabet and it took many decades of mindbending work to get an actual spell - wouldn't help right now. Loki shuts her eyes.

[einridi]

Thor falls silent.

"You are a disgrace, but a fortunate one," says Odin. (Thor frowns, but doesn't say anything.) "We will see what comes of the investigation."

And Odin collects her concerned husband and sweeps off.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki relaxes, a little, when Odin is gone.

[einridi]

Thor remains lost and confused and unhappy.

[purposeful_glory]

"There's not a good reason why women don't do magic," Loki says softly. "And there never, ever has been."

[einridi]

"But... but it's... it's not right," she says. "Except... you saved Father's life, that has to have been right, I don't understand why Mother is so angry..."