Valediction [Fólkvangr End, Book 3][Loki Fanfiction]

Chapter Ten - Sugar Cookie Hearts

Author's Note: It seems my notes are always my eternal gratefulness for your patience, but it's truly because your patience and my gratitude are never ending. I was just in Canada this past week, at Niagara Falls, and I found some time to get some writing done, surprisingly enough. My summer is coming to an end, the show I was in has ended, I ended my job in order to go back to school in about a week. So things are busy, but I've finally had some inspiration again and more clarity about where this book is going. Thank goodness. As always, bless all your hearts, and please enjoy this chapter and this poem in particular. Something about it struck a lovely and solemn chord with me. x

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I have been the villain before

but I have never written about it.

I have said I was sorry so many times

but only meant it once.

I have never been comfortable with blame

so I throw it into the air

like confetti.

When it all lands in

my hands, I demand a redo.

There is not much left to say.

I was a silly girl playing with

sugar cookie hearts.

I had no idea how they would crumble

on my tongue.

                                  —Fortesa Latifi

"What's all this?" comes Natasha's voice from the door. The news is still playing. Constant montages of the battle of New York, over and over again with new commentary, facts and figures discussed—repair costs, infrastructure damage...casualties. I feel the tears running down my cheeks but there's nothing to be done to stop them.

"Have you seen this?" I ask Natasha breathlessly. She sits down slowly beside me.

"Yes. It was a hot topic right after New York but it went away for a while. But now that's Loki's back on Earth, now that people know he's here, they want justice," Nat says, eyes affixed on the screen. She looks at me. "They aren't going to care about the Loki you know and love, Valkyrie. He is still the genocidal maniac who killed so many people and obliterated midtown Manhattan."

"You guys had a fair share in the damage," I remind her. I also don't miss the particular way she hits 'you'. Her feelings about him aren't always well hidden. I love Loki and I love Natasha, but I cannot blame her entirely for her aversion to my husband. An odd thing to admit, but still.

She smiles faintly. "Fair enough." I look back at the TV and swallow hard. "But they only care when it's hurting people. We were trying to help. They only see black and white sometimes."

"It freaks me out that we say 'they'. What does that even mean? Why are we trying to distance ourselves from them? Won't that make them even more angry about the whole superhero/villain dichotomy?"

"I think you forget sometimes you're not human, Valkyrie," Natasha says pointedly.

I turn to Natasha after a moment, exasperated. "How is it even fair that I can look at that footage of Loki and judge him so harshly? I knew all of this when I fell in love with him, I knew it when I married him. And I know who he is now. But above that, I've done lots of things I'm not proud of, and I've hurt people."