Mending broken bonds ch.3

Chapter 3: An awkward return.

As Loki woke up his eyes seemed frozen shut. He let out a groan and shifted his arms. His muscles popped and groaned, protesting against any movements. He managed to crack one eye open. His face was glued to the rocky floor. Daylight hardly made it through the crack where he had come in through the evening before. The icicles had melted even farther, the dripping water was probably even what woke him up. He tried to sit, his back aching so severely he feared it would just snap in two as he pressed himself against a nearby wall. He was still spoiled, all these years of soft beds and warmed rooms had left him used to nothing at all. He stared ahead. He'd had that dream again, the memory. Thor had promised him years, centuries ago to stay by his side. Loki had deemed that a children's promise, had forgotten it even as he ruined Midgard and when he had fled his cell. But Thor had never forgotten, he had kept his end of their promise, came for him in the cold outskirts of Jotunheim. And he, he just sat there in some cave cowering for just about everything. He had to go back, he owed Thor that. But he couldn't, he was a coward. He couldn't weave a web of lies around this, in Asgard only death would await, maybe torture if that was what satisfied them more. You did it yourself, didn't you? True, but still he liked himself better in one piece. You owe it to him… He bounced his head against the wall. Why was this so difficult? Here nothing but death waited too. The jotuns hated him and hunted after him for backstabbing them and murdering their king, his actual father. The bitter irony. In Asgard there would only be misery, a small chance of survival, but at least one more person that cared for him. He parted his lips to speak, but bit down on them again immediately. He couldn't do it, all these consequences he would have to bare.
'I would always stay by your side.'
Loki let out a snort. It would help more if Thor would stay in front of him, then he could shield the stones and murderous gazes. But still, Thor would be there, and somehow, it was all he needed now. Because here, here he had nobody.
"Heimdall," he whispered hesitantly, knowing that the gatekeeper would hear him even if he hardly made a sound. "Please just bring me home…"
He looked up, knowing it was silly because Heimdall or Asgard wasn't on the ceiling but maybe he didn't just address his words to the gatekeeper, maybe he did call upon a greater force. Around him an invisible force built that seemed to make the cave tingle with electricity. The Bifrost was opening. He just hoped that Thor would be waiting on the other side. A force pulled him in and his insides turned as he tumbled through empty space at a speed that could rip other creatures apart. Suddenly the dark lightened and he smacked face down on the golden floors of the Bifrost. Undignified he rolled on his back, a movement that took more effort than it should, and waited for the room to stop spinning around him at a sickening speed.
"You took longer than your brother to learn your lesson." Heimdall's disembodied voice concluded.
"Yes" Loki answered, afraid that more words would be accompanied with vomit.
He had no idea that travelling by the Bifrost could be so unpleasant for those who weren't used to it. He stayed on his back until he felt it was safe enough to at least sit up. Heimdall pulled his sword from the lock and eyed him without a word. Loki staggered to his feet, taking a few stumbling steps until he leaned against the edges of the gate. Then he realized something, cursing his slowness.
"Since when has the Bifrost been repaired? How?" he waited for his stomach to calm.
"The Tesseract…." was all that came for an answer.
Footsteps closed in quickly, a click of heels accompanying them. Loki froze immediately, his gaze shooting up from the floor.
"Heimdall, who came in? I cannot remember we were to have guests."
Loki recognized Lady Sif's voice well before she came in sight.
"Or is the councillor of….." her question was lost in her throat as Loki caught her eyes. The stern demanding brow almost shot up in surprise. She unsheathed her sword before Loki could move a muscle.
"Heimdall? What trickery is this?" she pulled her composure together again as if she still tried to hide her surprise.
"You may want to be a bit more specific my lady." the gatekeeper only spoke.
"What is that?" she pointed her blade at Loki.
Her eyes burned and her entire form spoke of hostility.
"Loki Odinson. A trickster maybe, but not trickery."
Loki vaguely felt the urge to react to 'Odinson' but refrained from it. He did shift uneasily, he had hoped not to meet anyone, especially not Sif. The woman snorted.
"Loki fell in the void when Thor destroyed the bridge."
His brow furrowed. So nobody knew about Midgard, about the Chitauri, not even about his time in prison? Had Thor not told anybody, or his father?
"I can tell you he is here." Heimdall said, not really answering any of Sif's doubts.
She stepped forward and pressed the tip of her blade against Loki's jaw, not intending to hurt him, not yet. He stepped back but felt the wall behind his back, he did raise his hands to show he meant no harm.
"You are either one hell of a spell or the real one, don't ask me how. Either way, you are not welcome here." she hissed at him.
"Just put the sword away, I will explain all you need to know, but-"
"Shut up!" she cut him off. "One more word or I cut your tongue out."
Of course, she knew how well he could lie, she had all reason to distrust him like that right away. Instead he nodded curtly, the steel scraped over his skin as he did.
"Heimdall, kick him back to where he came from! Whatever corner of the Nine Realms that may be."
"I cannot Lady Sif." the gatekeeper rested on his massive sword, not looking like he was going to step in or help.
"He is an intruder!" the sword quivered as Sif made an angry gesture.
"He is under the protection and approval of Thor."
Sif stood baffled again, looking at Heimdall as if she tried to see if he was under some mind control spell. She seemed to conclude that wasn't the case because she growled and turned to Loki again.
"So, are you're the real one?" her question was demanding.
At any other moment Loki would have eyed her without answering because surely she had told him to be quiet, but he liked his skin better without slices. Sif looked over his clothes disapprovingly, they were hardly fit for a prince after all, for any Asgardian even, hell they weren't even clothes.
He contemplated saying he wasn't, that he was only a trick to shake things up a bit. But then he had to figure motives and he had been out of news sources to long to make up a solid story. Besides, the chances of Sif stabbing that blade through his face to 'solve the problem' would rise significantly if he did. But he liked it better if she thought him dead, it was easier, no not worth it.
"Yes, I am still alive." he answered reluctantly.
Sif grew pale first and then red with rage.
"What makes you think you could ever set foot in Asgard again?!" the blade tore his skin as she stepped forward.
She hadn't necessarily meant to do so, not that she even thought of apologizing.
"Thor asked me to come back."
"Come back from where? How did he find you? And why didn't he find you earlier?"
Loki put his fingers on the blade to bend it from his face, or at least from the cut. Sif however put force on it, to warn him to not even try. This was nonsense, he could blow her across the bridge if he wanted to, she wouldn't stand a chance to act. His eyes darkened as he thought of the stream of power under his skin, he only had to reach out to it and she would be smacked away like an insect. But he couldn't start off like that, he had to show good will.
"From Jotunheim. How he found me I do not know, nor why it took him so long. You will have to ask Thor about that." they were only partly lies and truth, woven together like he always had.
"Jotunheim?" she repeated incredulous. "In that? You would have frozen to death."
Nobody told them of his heritage either? What exactly had they been told about him?
"Well I didn't." he fired back, hoping she would take it to be a sufficient answer.
"Answer me properly, why didn't you freeze to death in those sad bits of fur?"
"Caves are warmer, you know?" he started to get vexed, the wall pressing against his back made him feel cornered, not threatened though.
"You are practically naked."
"I'm a sorcerer you stupid woman." he hissed.
Wrong move. The steel cut over his jaw all the way back to his ear.
"Don't insult me, you are not in a position to be witty."
The warm liquid started to run down his throat and the fur on his shoulder sucked it in. It hardly bled fast but slowly it flowed into his clothing.
"Why would Thor even want you here?"
"I do not know." He lowered his arms for they got tired. "Why don't you me a favour and go ask him yourself instead of poking me in the face asking me questions I do not have answers to?"
He rose his voice only slightly but the point was clear.
"Because you have no right to call in any favours."
Very true.
"Maybe so, but I still cannot answer questions I don't have answers to."
The tension between them rose to boiling point. Heimdall stayed to the side, not calling out to either of them, not even ready to step in. He just looked with his everlastingly stoic face.
"Just give me two reasons to not bring your dead body to Thor and maybe I will-"
"- Sif? What's the bother?"
The woman turned around, displeased to be cut off like that. The sword slipped off his skin.
"Thor!" her tone was equal parts surprise and triumph. Apparently she didn't buy Loki's story about Thor wanting him back in Asgard.
To be honest, he hadn't believed it either a day before.
"Sif, put that sword away!" Thor shouted panicked as he noticed Loki standing across her.
She let out a snort and cocked her head.
"Like hell I will Thor! You may have gone insane but I have not forgotten what he did to you, or to the Allfather, or to whole of Asgard for that matter. He tried to kill you! He tried to kill all of us! He seized the throne, he let the jotuns walk in here!"
Thor sighed and put his hand on the blade.
"If he had meant harm, do you think you would still be standing here?" he asked earnestly.
Sif's eyes widened and shot over to Loki, horrified. She knew now, she knew he could have killed her in many horrible ways since he'd arrived, she realized how dead she could have been. As she put the sword away a grin crept over his face.
"Brother, you came home…" Thor's voice cracked.
"Now wait!" she shouted. "How can you welcome him back here?! Will you let him off that easy? After all he did?"
Thor made to protest but never got to it.
"Easy?" Loki asked, voice throbbing with anger, jaw clenched.
"You think I've had it 'easy' since disappearing?"
Suddenly his miserable current form became formidable and green fire seemed to roar in his eyes. Sif crawled back a bit, hoping she would be safe beside Thor.
"You have no idea what I went through while you all moved on! You couldn't even imagine it!"
As a suffocating darkness came to gather both Thor and Sif had fear in their eyes.
"You are right she doesn't, just calm down." Thor spoke softly and stretched an arm to soothe him. Loki's arm shot up and guarded him off.
"I have wished for death as it didn't come at times while nobody knew I even still existed."
"Asgard mourned for somebody who didn't deserve it! That is all I know!"
"If anyone had bothered but ask they had no need to mourn for they would have known I was alive!"
That comment was maybe fired against Thor rather than at Sif, but that was well beside the point now. He was too busy keeping the fire under his skin under control so he wouldn't lash at anyone with it. It burned him from inside, begging to be used.
Thor stood a bit lost between them not knowing what to do.
"Talking about easy, you seemed to have no problems when Thor's banishment lasted only three days. Three days for starting a possible war if I hadn't been the more imminent problem."
"Because Thor learned his lesson in those three days!"
"And now Loki has learned his." Heimdall interrupted their fighting, seeing it was going the wrong way entirely. "We all make mistakes."
They all fell quiet, Sif dared not make another comment. She wanted to, but she was too afraid of what Loki could do to her if she really crossed the line. Loki thanked Heimdall with a nod, the rage driven fire calmed in his veins slowly, too slowly. It smouldered in his body, ready to flare again if he would be challenged. The silence dragged and the tension didn't ease the least, looks exchanged were only a few notches short of death-ray, although Loki's looked slightly more lethal than Sif's. Somebody had to interrupt but nobody could think of a way to lift the tension. Loki could try but Sif would take his every word to lash at him again, not matter the lethal consequences. Sif would not even try, she looked to leave, but seemed not to keen on turning her back on Loki as he looked at her like that. So the first to start talking was Thor.
"Please dearest Sif. Even I do not know all that Loki has experienced in the void, but I can tell that he is no longer the same person as he was before he fell."
The woman was far from accepting that for an explanation.
"This will not stand Thor!" she shouted striding back to her horse on the bridge. "The people of Asgard will not understand your mad decision!"
She yanked at the leads and galloped away from the Bifrost. Loki stayed silent and stared at the ornate floors.  
"You came back." Thor sighed happily and wrapped his arms around his brother.
"Thor, let me go!" Loki warned.
The blond god's arms were almost too strong for him, his ribs protested.
"You will get blood on yourself."
He freed one arm and used it as leverage to push his brother back. Thor looked disappointed, he wanted to hold him, but he nodded that he understood. Nevertheless he still looked genuinely happy.
"We should go, I have not brought a horse, I had no idea you would be back. Should I get one?"
Thor was all hyped up now. Loki gave him a thin smile before his face became grave again.
"I know you are happy but…." he sighed. "Sif is right about things too. Asgard will not like to see me return. I have made many people angry, I am still the enemy. And father and mother…."
He fell silent. He shrugged, not knowing what exactly to add.
"Loki, Asgard mourned for you remember? They cared."
"Nonsense, they mourn out of respect. Because you mourned, because I was still the prince. Don't you think that behind your back they drank to my death?"
Heimdall had long returned to his place on the bridge, giving them a sense of privacy.
"But I thought that they all…" Thor's smile was gone now.
Loki cocked his head and let out a mirthless snicker.
"How naïve Thor. Believe me, Asgard was joyed when I disappeared, and they will be furious to hear I am not dead. They will demand me killed, publically…" he was going to add more to enforce his point but the words died on his tongue.
"Are you afraid that will happen?"
Loki snapped his head to Thor to throw back a sharp reaction but it didn't make it out of his throat. He had begged for death on days, alone and forgotten as the Chitauri had almost broken his body and mind, but now, back home and with Thor on his side rather than against him he feared death again.
"Yes." he whispered.
"Father will never let it happen brother. Not a man in Asgard will go against his judgement."
"Judgement?"
"Father was the one who sent me to bring you home, he chose not to tell Asgard of the Chitauri and Midgard. He told me that he had seen all, that it had been enough. That you were to be imprisoned to come to your senses."
Loki sighed, his bottom lip quivering from the emotion that rushed through him, such a childish reaction. His father knew, his father had seen. He had deemed it enough to be forgiven, so he had deemed it unfair. But then why hadn't he done anything?
"Loki? What exactly did the Chitauri do to you? I mean, father ushered a few words but…"
Ushered a few words….. Torture…. Pain….. So much pain….
Before he realized a tear escaped his supervision of composure.
"Not now…" he offered Thor for a weak answer.
And Thor understood, Loki could see anger and hopelessness boil behind those blue eyes, even a formidable rage that things happened would not be undone.
"Nobody will hurt you again." Thor promised bitterly.
The look of determination said enough, it was a promise. Just as he had promised to stop him on Midgard, promised to protect the humans from harm.
Loki nodded.
"We should go. Mother has cried a lot for you. She wishes dearly to see you again."
He walked to his horse on the bridge.
"You are welcome in Asgard brother." he said. "Asgard only still has to realize that."
Loki eyed the messy work on the clasps and buckles of the horses gear. He frowned as Thor got up and stretched out a hand to pull him up behind him. Saying they would have to share because he wasn't prepared.
"Did you saddle that horse yourself?" he asked, pretty sure he knew the answer to that.
"Yes. Why?"
Loki chuckled, the heaviness of a minute ago slipping from his shoulders.
"Then I think I will rather just walk beside you."
Thor retreated his hand. He looked confused at first, not understanding.
"You never really paid attention did you?"
The younger pointed at the twisted buckles connecting the leads. Thor's ears flushed red, as did his cheeks.
"At least I made an attempt." he defended.
He opened one of the saddle bags and threw a heap of fabric to Loki. It was a hooded cape.
"I use it to sneak out of the city unseen, I just figured you could use it, for now. And to cover, you know," he gestured at the fur uneasily. "Yourself…."
Loki nodded and put the dark fabric over his shoulders. Thor handed him a simple pin to close it. He put the hood over his face and the two started walking. Nobody would know that it was Loki of Asgard that Thor escorted back to the magnificent city gates.