21 OCTOBER, 2013
ASTRID
She remembered saying something dramatically dimwitted to Heimdall, the Gatekeeper (something like "You're still handsome"), to which he replied something like "Your mark on the universe is fading, young one." She had just smiled weakly at him while Thor escorted her and Jane across the bridge she thought she would never return to.
Her energy returned in small bursts once the residue of her rifts disappeared, so once they reached the giant golden palace with its spires scraping the endless sky, Astrid finally panicked.
King Odin would kill her if he knew she was here. After all, he'd nearly taken her head with him to shove into a display case the last time she stepped foot on this world: the traitor with incredible magic who had let an army of Dark Elves flood into Asgard. They had not parted on good terms; she guessed he would refuse to consider a trial this time.
She would just have to blend in. Easy.
"Thor," she said, "why did you bring Jane?"
"She is sick with something I cannot name. I had no choice but to bring her here, and I couldn't leave you on Earth." Thor had Jane's hand in his, mostly to steer her away from bumping into things while she stared open-mouthed at the living universe around her.
"I feel fine," said Jane absently, watching a comet streak across the sky.
"You're not fine, Jane," said Thor, holding her face in his hands so she would look at him. "Let me help you."
Astrid watched them. Watched the gooey admiration cover Jane's eyes like a pane of glass. "I'm fine," she whispered.
"I want to be sure." He smoothed her hair behind her ear. "I won't lose you."
Her hand was so small when it overlapped his. "Okay."
Astrid looked away, averting her gaze from the couple and the guards and any other living things. The only safe place to look was the ground.
Loki was on Asgard. He was here, alive, rotting in a cage below the castle. He'd taken her planet hostage, killed so many of its inhabitants, tried to slay his brother, tried to forget she had ever existed...
And, for all he knew, she was dead.
She squared her shoulders. She didn't care about Loki. She didn't care that he thought about her. She certainly didn't care that he was locked away for the rest of his too-long life. In fact, it was what he deserved. Astrid's magic began to pool warmly inside her, little fires sprouting along her veins. "We should go," she said.
"Yes," said Thor, taking hold of Jane's hand again. "Are you all right, Astrid?"
"Peachy." She didn't even think once about Loki, so close to her, stuck mere feet below the palace, dreaming about her, perhaps suffering a great deal. "I'm going to need a disguise."
~
For Jane, Thor had a servant bring a dress of fine, deep blue silk overlaid with a coppery shawl. She looked ethereal. Of course, Astrid could not be seen. So, Thor stole a spare servant's gown that was far too long, and Jane helped her pin it haphazardly. At least the slit on the left side meant she could aim a kick if necessary. She let her hair down, brushed through it with her fingers, and then slipped on a (stolen) pair of strong-soled leather sandals that wrapped like snakes up her calves. She even carried around an armful of the choppy fabric to make it look like she was busy.
"You look beautiful," said Astrid, once she slipped into the infirmary just behind Jane and Thor.
Jane tried to conceal her smile, but she was a scientist, so she failed. "So do you. I like the shoes."
Astrid was better at hiding things, but she still glanced down at Jane's identical leather sandals. "No, you don't."
Jane laughed. "God, they're so uncomfortable!"
Thor brought Jane onto an examination table, one that looked much more comfortable that Tony Stark's. Astrid receded into the corner, head down like a good little servant. Nobody noticed nor cared that an extra body crowded the room.
Instantly, five women crowded Jane, none daring to ask questions about where she'd come from. Instead, they suspended a projection of her restless form into the air, made of floating orange particles that they called a soul forge; Jane, pointing and squirming to the chagrin of her nurses, challenged them on every breath. Astrid smiled at the floor. The woman would call anything science. She wondered what she made of her magic.
Another servant, dressed in blue, stood next to Astrid and said, "Do you know her?"
"No," she was quick to say. Though her Asgardian tongue was unpolished, she had listened to enough of Loki's stories to pick up on a few particularities.
"She will die, I think," said the young girl. Young, perhaps, only in the face. She could be a thousand.
Astrid's head sunk low along with her stomach. "How can you be sure?"
"A human cannot sustain the amount of energy that courses through her." The girl's lips were pressed tightly together, and her eyes fixed on Jane. "I often wonder what it is like to be so vulnerable."
Astrid said nothing. Her hands became clammy clasped together in front of her, and the servant jumped. Why the servant jumped, Astrid did not know, until she registered heavy footsteps, the clanking of metal, and a deep voice that wedged itself into every crevice in the wall.
King Odin was here. And he looked, of course, displeased.
"Are my words mere noise to you?" he asked Thor.
The god stepped forward, grasping the edge of Jane's table with one hand. "She is ill."
"She is human," said Odin coldly. "Illness is their defining trait."
Astrid had to wring out her hands to quell the magic that danced along them, begging to knock the old man over.
"Can we not help her?" said Thor. The nurses around him had quietly paused their work, watching the guards next to the king.
"She does not belong here any more than a goat belongs at a banquet table."
Astrid thought that it was perfectly reasonable to see a goat at a banquet table, and then she thought to intervene, and then she finally wanted to slap herself for even tilting her head up even a little.
Jane sat up, frowning at Odin. "Did you just...? Who do you think you are?"
"I am Odin. King of Asgard. Protector of the Nine Realms."
Paranoiac. Murderer. Relentless pain in my ass. Astrid didn't move more than a muscle in her pinky finger.
Jane's fire reined itself back inside, and she said, "Oh. Well, I'm-"
"I know very well who you are, Jane Foster."
Her little smile when she turned on Thor was impossibly lighthearted. "You told your dad about me?"
Astrid almost laughed. Thor, though, had a jaw set so tight it could snap. "There is something within Jane, Father. It's something I have never seen before."
"Guards, take her back to Midgard. Let her own doctors take care of it," said Odin. You superior, condescending, utter jackass. Astrid had saved his planet, disintegrated an army's worth of Dark Elves through to their bones; a mere Earthling, an illness.
The guards began to move in on Jane, and Astrid finally looked up when Thor shouted, "I would not-!"
A hand on Jane's arm caused the room to burst with a shockwave of crimson, sending over guards while Astrid kept herself steady against the wall. Once Jane sank back down to lie on her table, Astrid realized she had done it. "-touch her," finished Thor, seeing to the woman with the gentlest hand Astrid had ever seen him use.
The urge to move nearly took Astrid's feet off the ground. But Odin still looked their way, apparently changing his mind. "Come with me," he said sharply.
Thor helped Jane up, then cast a dangerous glance toward Astrid, who barely nodded: Go ahead. She couldn't follow. Jane was lucky not to have been accused of high treason, but Astrid would not risk banishment or death if she could still help Jane.
Because she would look very stupid if she asked for directions, Astrid resolved to find her own way to the library. She slipped out of the infirmary, a mere shadow against the wall, and carried her little bundle of fabric with a straight spine and downcast eyes through the magnificent corridors.
She remembered, vaguely, these parts of the castle. The infirmary was on the fifth floor (she had spent some time there, nearly dead). She had never been to the library, but she knew it was massive, so it would not be in any of the little spires atop the castle. Loki's bedroom was... not far. Astrid gritted her teeth, found a staircase, and practically ran down it.
She didn't know why she had hoped there would be signs pointing her in the right direction, but it was only when she caught herself looking upward toward the ceiling for one that she bumped directly into another hurrying body.
"I am so sorry," she began, casting her eyes around the floor to make sure the woman hadn't dropped anything. Astrid planned to apologize some more and then keep scurrying along, but she caught the other's eye and nearly yelped.
"Frigga-?"
The queen pulled her by the wrist into a hallway that branched off the large one, holding Astrid in place by the shoulders to get a long look at her. The queen's eyes were soft, warm, and urgent. "You must know what a fool you are," she said breathlessly.
Astrid nodded vaguely, but it didn't matter what she was about to say because Frigga had already pulled her into an embrace. Her long hair smelled of cinnamon. "Look at you, dear," murmured the queen. "You look like death."
Astrid gathered herself enough to laugh. "I didn't think I would ever-"
"Neither did I." Frigga pulled back, stared at her again. "You're still alive. Oh, thank all the gods, you're still alive."
"That's a funny story, actually-"
Frigga silenced her with a swift shake of the head. "There is no time, Astrid. You know you must leave. My husband has not forgotten you."
"I can't leave," said Astrid. "My friend is sick, and Thor thinks the answer might be here."
"Thor," said Frigga softly. "Are you not sick, too?"
"That's a not-so-funny story," said Astrid. "I'm dying, actually."
The queen's face turned a bit grey. "Your magic?"
"Something else." Astrid smiled sadly. "My magic is about the only thing keeping me alive."
A faint laugh left Frigga. "Yes, it does tend to do that," she said. "Oh, darling, my son..."
Astrid bit her lip. She didn't want to hear of him. "Frigga..."
"My Loki," said the queen, her hand grasping the cloth of her dress that covered her heart. "He suffers so greatly from losing you."
"He suffers from losing his own war," said Astrid.
Frigga's eyes shone with tears. "Loki abandoned himself somewhere along the way, Astrid, but it was not because of you."
Astrid straightened her back once more and shoved the magic back down. She had no time for talk of Loki. "Thor mentioned something called the Convergence," she said. "What, exactly, is it?"
Frigga looked taken aback by the change of topic, but she said, "It's a complete, perfect alignment of the Nine Realms. It only occurs once every five thousand years, and it is occurring again now."
"If all the worlds are lined up like dominoes," said Astrid, "then they can... interact?"
"The fabric of space is vulnerable to tears and bends," confirmed Frigga.
So that was why her magic had reacted so violently. She had ended up in London because the Nine Realms just decided to come together. Poetic. "I think I might have found one of those tears. And I think my friend did, too," she said. "She was infected with a sort of magic, one neither Thor nor Odin have seen before."
Frigga's face was sober. "Then she is possessed by something very old, or very dangerous. Odin knows many of the sources of magic."
"He couldn't explain me."
The queen smirked. "You are unexplainable, my dear. Now, come with me."