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I'm ba-aaack! *grins* After a very lovely holiday, in which I did absolutely nothing except swim, read, walk and watch the weather move across the mountains and the sea. And to celebrate my return, the first part of a fic I've been mulling over during the holiday. I know I've others waiting to be written, but there was something about the wilds that inspires you to mythology ...
Next parts should be up fairly soon
Title: Apples (part I)
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Supernatural, Norse Myth, (Irish Myth in later parts)
Continuity: PREQUEL, set after freeing Loki's kids, but well before Weregild
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel/Loki. Mention of Jor, Hel, Fenrir, Odin, Idunn, Thjazi
Summary: It takes Gabriel a while to notice, but all is not right with the god he's possessed ...
Wordcount: 2388
Warnings: Maybe a touch of melodrama. Also Loki. The god needs a warning all his own
Notes: Shamelessly self-indulgent. I wanted to play with more myths, and holidays in the wilds of Ireland made me want to play with our own myths a little. But first, some more Norse ...
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Next parts should be up fairly soon
Title: Apples (part I)
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Supernatural, Norse Myth, (Irish Myth in later parts)
Continuity: PREQUEL, set after freeing Loki's kids, but well before Weregild
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel/Loki. Mention of Jor, Hel, Fenrir, Odin, Idunn, Thjazi
Summary: It takes Gabriel a while to notice, but all is not right with the god he's possessed ...
Wordcount: 2388
Warnings: Maybe a touch of melodrama. Also Loki. The god needs a warning all his own
Notes: Shamelessly self-indulgent. I wanted to play with more myths, and holidays in the wilds of Ireland made me want to play with our own myths a little. But first, some more Norse ...
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Apples - Part I
It took Gabriel a long time to notice it. Far longer than it should have.
There were various reasons for that, of course. It wasn't just obliviousness. His own Grace clouded the issue, affecting Loki more and more powerfully over time. There was also the fact that he had less and less time in between panicking to be thinking about it, as Loki took them again and again on wild quests, thieving from dwarves and sneaking around the edges of Asgard, a bold and laughing challenge to an increasingly irritated Odin, though his god grew steadily grimmer and more determined about them as time went on. All mitigating circumstances, helping to excuse his stunning failure to see the obvious.
But more prominently, there was the fact that Loki had very deliberately hidden it from him. Changed their appearance to flow between youth and age, ostensibly as a disguise. Kept them from mirrors and pools, distracted Gabriel as best he could. Loki hid it from him.
He should have figured it out sooner. He should have seen the growing desperation of those sallies for what it was, should have felt the creeping touch of age underneath the steady pulse of his Grace. Should have realised what was happening. But he didn't. Not until they lounged by a pool one day, visiting with Jor, and Gabriel had happened to glance at their reflection while Loki was distracted by his son. Not until he saw an aged man sitting under the tree, russet hair rapidly silvering and lines creeping across his face, when Loki had made no effort to make them look old. When he knew for a fact that Loki hadn't disguised them in any way.
Not until he saw that, did he realise. Loki was getting old.
Loki was dying.
The god knew the moment he figured it out. Loki knew the second he realised, gathering them to their feet in a sudden panic, whisking them away from a bewildered Jor without so much as a goodbye, leaving Gabriel no time to react, even if he could have around the sudden, paralysing rush of shock. No time to react, but ... time enough to see, in the second as they turned, Jormungandr's expression turn from surprise to a deep, aching sadness. He did have time to see that.
He had time, at the sight of it, for shock to turn to something more vital, more virulent. He had time to get angry.
Loki was a hell of a runner, when he was pushed, and he had taken as much control of the body as he could, one rapid burst of terror and determination, running hard and fast. Running from something he couldn't escape, and Gabriel was suddenly just angry enough to let him know about it. He caught them in their run, stopping Loki cold in a rush of wings and fury. Loki snarled at him silently, straining against Gabriel's control of their -his- body, fighting the possession, fighting Gabriel, for the first time in decades. Fighting hard but, weakened and dying as he apparently was, the god had no chance. Not against an archangel's fury. Gabriel stopped them cold.
"Planning on telling me anytime soon?" he snarled, vicious and pained, finding a nice high cliff above a fjord where the god couldn't run, even if Gabriel hadn't been inside him, threaded through him ... pissed off as all hell ... He wished, for one white moment, that Loki had a body he could shake, that the god was separate enough from him for violence to actually be an option. The sick knot of sudden fear in his belly demanded a more visceral resolution than words allowed.
"If you can't spot it for yourself, archangel, maybe you don't deserve to know!" the god snapped back, still struggling. Straining against the touch of Gabriel's Grace, fighting with a viciousness Gabriel had almost forgotten the god had. Fighting the way Loki always fought, when he was afraid.
"I don't deserve to know!?" he repeated incredulously, furiously. What the ...? "I don't deserve to know that you're dying!? That we're dying!? That you've been withering away around me for ... how long? How long? How long have you been hiding ..."
"What does it matter to you!" Loki shouted suddenly, going still so fast and hard it almost hurt, almost shook Gabriel away from him, as far as the body allowed. Going still with a hard, vicious restraint as he snarled inside Gabriel. "What does it matter, archangel. It won't kill you. You might have to find another vessel on short notice, but it won't kill ..."
He shut up, feeling the wave of emotion that hurtled through Gabriel at that, the crippling surge of shock and white pain and battered, distant anger. Loki fell silent.
"Another ... After all this ... After Jor, and Hel, after Fenrir, you think ..." The words sounded colourless, even to his own ears, nothing worthy of a Messenger, but they were too distant to be anything else, said by another mouth a mile away, and Gabriel could barely care.
Loki sagged. Sank back, releasing his determined hold on the body and leaving Gabriel in control once more, curling back in exhaustion against the archangel's Grace. The Grace that had been sustaining him, Gabriel realised, for possibly a lot longer than he knew. He hadn't noticed, the leakage lost in the wild jumble of his and Loki's joining, the sheer size and strength of an archangel's Grace holding them both together. Loki had stolen it, lightfingered and desperate, and he'd never noticed.
He hadn't noticed a lot of things, apparently.
"I don't think, Gabriel," his god whispered softly. "Not that. I want to, because it would be so much easier to deal with than ... than you, you clingy archangel, but ..."
Gabriel shook their head, closing his eyes in frustration. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, quietly. Maybe a little desperately. "Why didn't you say something? Did you think I wouldn't help, would ... take back my Grace, or ... Why, Loki?"
"Because you can't fix it," the Trickster answered. Flatly, even coldly, a sudden hard veneer. "Not without picking a direct fight with Odin, or announcing your presence to anyone who cares to look at us. If I use much more of your Grace, it's going to be very obvious exactly what's resting under this skin, Gabriel, and I've no interest in fighting your family as well as ... well. Everyone else. And there's no way ... I've tried, but Odin knows I'm coming, he's known all along what I'd have to do, and there's no way in ..."
"Loki," Gabriel interrupted, softly and dangerously, reaching around inside them to gather the god to him in a gesture somewhere between comfort and threat. "How about you stop for a second, think this through, and then tell me what the hell is going on!" He stopped, breathed for a second. "And then, when you're done, we can start thinking of doing something about it." He sensed Loki move to speak, and held up a (rather useless) hand. "I refuse to believe you, of all people, intend to give up, so shut it, Trickster. Tell me what's going on."
Loki stayed silent for a long, long minute. More in shock than consideration, Gabriel thought wryly, though the gears never stopped turning in that dark and laughing mind. Loki was silent for a long while. Until ...
"You know we're not like you," the Trickster said at last. "The Aesir. We're not like First-father and his angels. We were born, not made. And our immortality is a little more ... fragile." A wry smile, a dark little curl of their lips as Loki gave in to sardonic self-amusement. Gabriel gave him the expression, and kept his own bitter smile to himself.
"I got that much. Skip the cosmology, Jotunsson," he murmured quietly. "Get to the details." Like how to keep you alive ...
"I'm getting to it, Messenger," his god flashed back, brittle and fragile himself, for more reasons perhaps than fading immortality. "Do you want to understand, or do you want to growl at me some more?"
Gabriel didn't answer. A bit of both ...
"Her name is Idunn," Loki went on at last, petulantly, and a little obliquely. "The goddess Idunn. You haven't met her. Ever since the little incident with Thjazi, she doesn't get outside Asgard much, and since I've been free I suspect ... No. I know Odin has been keeping her under tight wraps. He's not going to chance my getting my hands on her again."
"Again?" Gabriel interrupted, rather dryly. "Do I want to know?"
"I was under coercion at the time!" Loki snapped. "It was either get pulled apart, or give the feathery bastard his pretty goddess and her apples. And besides! I got her back!"
"Also under coercion?" Gabriel asked, and felt the rush of bitterness in answer. Figured. He'd noticed over the years that there was a bit of theme going on in his god's past dealings with the Aesir. Bastards. "Never mind, Loki. Just tell me there's some relevance here, yes?"
"There's relevance," Loki confirmed quietly. "Idunn ... She's what keeps the Aesir alive. Well. Her apples, to be precise. Idunn, the Keeper of Youth. Those apples ... one bite, and life flows back through your veins, archangel. Youth, power. Life. But without them ... well. You saw what we look like now. Without them ... I probably shouldn't have lasted even this long, except your Grace has more than a little juice itself ..."
Gabriel digested that. Digested the implications. "Odin knew," he said at last, very quietly. "He knew the moment he let us go, that first time, didn't he? That as long as he held Idunn ... That's why he hasn't move against you, despite you menacing Asgard at every possible turn. He's hoping either you'll die, or I'll have to reveal myself, long before he has to take any direct action."
Loki nodded. "And he's not wrong," the god said softly. "He's not wrong, Gabriel. Your Grace is getting more and more obvious inside us, the weaker I get and the more I have to use it to stay alive. We can't breach Asgard, we can't reach Idunn, and it won't be too long before ... well. Before your cover isn't worth shit, and my continued existence comes into serious question." He smiled lopsidedly, ignoring how Gabriel clenched their jaw. "Now you know why I didn't push my blood-brother, Gabriel. Not until ... not until the murder of my children started being an option he condoned, anyway. He doesn't tend to lose."
Gabriel made a deliberate effort to loosen their jaw, ignoring the wry twitch Loki put to the corner of their mouth. Oddly, most of what he felt from the god now was relief, and a sort of bitter amusement, and after a second Gabriel realised that the fear he'd felt before, the fear that had made Loki fight him, hadn't been fear of Odin, or death, or the age creeping through their veins. It had been fear of him, his reaction. Loki had been afraid of what he'd do, once he knew.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked again, very, very quietly, but part of him knew. Part of him knew.
"We made a deal," Loki said, almost sheepishly, bitterly defiant. "A deal ... A deal I can't keep, Gabriel, not without Idunn's apples. Without them, I won't have a body to share in return for my freedom. Not that it will matter to me by that point, but you ... I don't break my word, Gabriel, and especially not ... not to family, but this time I have promised something I can't give."
"And you thought ... what? That I'd put you back in the hole, try to find another vessel? Let Odin have you?" He didn't quite succeed in keeping the hurt from his voice, or the press of soul between them, but he was proud of the effort he'd managed to make. "Loki ..."
"No," the god whispered quietly. "Not ... Yes, a little. Gabriel ... survival is survival, and this puts you in a lot of danger. It would not ... I would not ..." Loki trailed off in frustration, leaving Gabriel only the wash of old hurt, bitterness, protective determination, strange surrender and the faint tang of fear to help him puzzle out his god's reasoning.
Loki was a Trickster and a liar and a thief, who would do pretty much anything to survive. But he'd made a deal, and whatever else the god would do, he would not break his word. Especially not when he gave it to family.
Even if that family killed him for keeping it.
"I don't hurt family, Loki," Gabriel said at last, resisting the urge to pull his soul a little away from the god's, resisting the old instinct to hide before his mouth could give him away, and leave them room to hurt him. Family. Always, family. "Not anymore, not again. Not you. Not you, not your children, not any of this ridiculous family you've ... you've let me into. I don't hurt family. I won't."
Loki was silent again. Just for a minute, silent and still, before he wrapped himself almost tentatively around Gabriel, around the archangel cradled inside his dying body, against his soul. Loki curled close, hard and bitter and warm, and sighed against Gabriel's mind.
"So what do we do, archangel?" he murmured, rich and tired and blackly laughing. "What do we do?"
And Gabriel thought, about gods and immortality, and death and goddesses, and the knowing look in Jor's eyes as they fled. He thought about other worlds, and other faiths, and how there was more than one way to skin a cat. He thought about how long Loki had been dying around him, and the tightness around Hel's eyes as she watched, the cold anger and faint exasperation he hadn't understood. Another thing he'd failed to take note of. Until now.
"I'll tell you what we do," he murmured, spreading his wings and looking north, to the cold shadows where Niflheim waited. "We go ask your very patient children what it is they've been plotting for years now, and hope Hel reins in the urge to growl at us for being so blind. That's what we do."
Loki blinked, long and hard.
Then he smiled.
Contd: Apples, Part II
It took Gabriel a long time to notice it. Far longer than it should have.
There were various reasons for that, of course. It wasn't just obliviousness. His own Grace clouded the issue, affecting Loki more and more powerfully over time. There was also the fact that he had less and less time in between panicking to be thinking about it, as Loki took them again and again on wild quests, thieving from dwarves and sneaking around the edges of Asgard, a bold and laughing challenge to an increasingly irritated Odin, though his god grew steadily grimmer and more determined about them as time went on. All mitigating circumstances, helping to excuse his stunning failure to see the obvious.
But more prominently, there was the fact that Loki had very deliberately hidden it from him. Changed their appearance to flow between youth and age, ostensibly as a disguise. Kept them from mirrors and pools, distracted Gabriel as best he could. Loki hid it from him.
He should have figured it out sooner. He should have seen the growing desperation of those sallies for what it was, should have felt the creeping touch of age underneath the steady pulse of his Grace. Should have realised what was happening. But he didn't. Not until they lounged by a pool one day, visiting with Jor, and Gabriel had happened to glance at their reflection while Loki was distracted by his son. Not until he saw an aged man sitting under the tree, russet hair rapidly silvering and lines creeping across his face, when Loki had made no effort to make them look old. When he knew for a fact that Loki hadn't disguised them in any way.
Not until he saw that, did he realise. Loki was getting old.
Loki was dying.
The god knew the moment he figured it out. Loki knew the second he realised, gathering them to their feet in a sudden panic, whisking them away from a bewildered Jor without so much as a goodbye, leaving Gabriel no time to react, even if he could have around the sudden, paralysing rush of shock. No time to react, but ... time enough to see, in the second as they turned, Jormungandr's expression turn from surprise to a deep, aching sadness. He did have time to see that.
He had time, at the sight of it, for shock to turn to something more vital, more virulent. He had time to get angry.
Loki was a hell of a runner, when he was pushed, and he had taken as much control of the body as he could, one rapid burst of terror and determination, running hard and fast. Running from something he couldn't escape, and Gabriel was suddenly just angry enough to let him know about it. He caught them in their run, stopping Loki cold in a rush of wings and fury. Loki snarled at him silently, straining against Gabriel's control of their -his- body, fighting the possession, fighting Gabriel, for the first time in decades. Fighting hard but, weakened and dying as he apparently was, the god had no chance. Not against an archangel's fury. Gabriel stopped them cold.
"Planning on telling me anytime soon?" he snarled, vicious and pained, finding a nice high cliff above a fjord where the god couldn't run, even if Gabriel hadn't been inside him, threaded through him ... pissed off as all hell ... He wished, for one white moment, that Loki had a body he could shake, that the god was separate enough from him for violence to actually be an option. The sick knot of sudden fear in his belly demanded a more visceral resolution than words allowed.
"If you can't spot it for yourself, archangel, maybe you don't deserve to know!" the god snapped back, still struggling. Straining against the touch of Gabriel's Grace, fighting with a viciousness Gabriel had almost forgotten the god had. Fighting the way Loki always fought, when he was afraid.
"I don't deserve to know!?" he repeated incredulously, furiously. What the ...? "I don't deserve to know that you're dying!? That we're dying!? That you've been withering away around me for ... how long? How long? How long have you been hiding ..."
"What does it matter to you!" Loki shouted suddenly, going still so fast and hard it almost hurt, almost shook Gabriel away from him, as far as the body allowed. Going still with a hard, vicious restraint as he snarled inside Gabriel. "What does it matter, archangel. It won't kill you. You might have to find another vessel on short notice, but it won't kill ..."
He shut up, feeling the wave of emotion that hurtled through Gabriel at that, the crippling surge of shock and white pain and battered, distant anger. Loki fell silent.
"Another ... After all this ... After Jor, and Hel, after Fenrir, you think ..." The words sounded colourless, even to his own ears, nothing worthy of a Messenger, but they were too distant to be anything else, said by another mouth a mile away, and Gabriel could barely care.
Loki sagged. Sank back, releasing his determined hold on the body and leaving Gabriel in control once more, curling back in exhaustion against the archangel's Grace. The Grace that had been sustaining him, Gabriel realised, for possibly a lot longer than he knew. He hadn't noticed, the leakage lost in the wild jumble of his and Loki's joining, the sheer size and strength of an archangel's Grace holding them both together. Loki had stolen it, lightfingered and desperate, and he'd never noticed.
He hadn't noticed a lot of things, apparently.
"I don't think, Gabriel," his god whispered softly. "Not that. I want to, because it would be so much easier to deal with than ... than you, you clingy archangel, but ..."
Gabriel shook their head, closing his eyes in frustration. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, quietly. Maybe a little desperately. "Why didn't you say something? Did you think I wouldn't help, would ... take back my Grace, or ... Why, Loki?"
"Because you can't fix it," the Trickster answered. Flatly, even coldly, a sudden hard veneer. "Not without picking a direct fight with Odin, or announcing your presence to anyone who cares to look at us. If I use much more of your Grace, it's going to be very obvious exactly what's resting under this skin, Gabriel, and I've no interest in fighting your family as well as ... well. Everyone else. And there's no way ... I've tried, but Odin knows I'm coming, he's known all along what I'd have to do, and there's no way in ..."
"Loki," Gabriel interrupted, softly and dangerously, reaching around inside them to gather the god to him in a gesture somewhere between comfort and threat. "How about you stop for a second, think this through, and then tell me what the hell is going on!" He stopped, breathed for a second. "And then, when you're done, we can start thinking of doing something about it." He sensed Loki move to speak, and held up a (rather useless) hand. "I refuse to believe you, of all people, intend to give up, so shut it, Trickster. Tell me what's going on."
Loki stayed silent for a long, long minute. More in shock than consideration, Gabriel thought wryly, though the gears never stopped turning in that dark and laughing mind. Loki was silent for a long while. Until ...
"You know we're not like you," the Trickster said at last. "The Aesir. We're not like First-father and his angels. We were born, not made. And our immortality is a little more ... fragile." A wry smile, a dark little curl of their lips as Loki gave in to sardonic self-amusement. Gabriel gave him the expression, and kept his own bitter smile to himself.
"I got that much. Skip the cosmology, Jotunsson," he murmured quietly. "Get to the details." Like how to keep you alive ...
"I'm getting to it, Messenger," his god flashed back, brittle and fragile himself, for more reasons perhaps than fading immortality. "Do you want to understand, or do you want to growl at me some more?"
Gabriel didn't answer. A bit of both ...
"Her name is Idunn," Loki went on at last, petulantly, and a little obliquely. "The goddess Idunn. You haven't met her. Ever since the little incident with Thjazi, she doesn't get outside Asgard much, and since I've been free I suspect ... No. I know Odin has been keeping her under tight wraps. He's not going to chance my getting my hands on her again."
"Again?" Gabriel interrupted, rather dryly. "Do I want to know?"
"I was under coercion at the time!" Loki snapped. "It was either get pulled apart, or give the feathery bastard his pretty goddess and her apples. And besides! I got her back!"
"Also under coercion?" Gabriel asked, and felt the rush of bitterness in answer. Figured. He'd noticed over the years that there was a bit of theme going on in his god's past dealings with the Aesir. Bastards. "Never mind, Loki. Just tell me there's some relevance here, yes?"
"There's relevance," Loki confirmed quietly. "Idunn ... She's what keeps the Aesir alive. Well. Her apples, to be precise. Idunn, the Keeper of Youth. Those apples ... one bite, and life flows back through your veins, archangel. Youth, power. Life. But without them ... well. You saw what we look like now. Without them ... I probably shouldn't have lasted even this long, except your Grace has more than a little juice itself ..."
Gabriel digested that. Digested the implications. "Odin knew," he said at last, very quietly. "He knew the moment he let us go, that first time, didn't he? That as long as he held Idunn ... That's why he hasn't move against you, despite you menacing Asgard at every possible turn. He's hoping either you'll die, or I'll have to reveal myself, long before he has to take any direct action."
Loki nodded. "And he's not wrong," the god said softly. "He's not wrong, Gabriel. Your Grace is getting more and more obvious inside us, the weaker I get and the more I have to use it to stay alive. We can't breach Asgard, we can't reach Idunn, and it won't be too long before ... well. Before your cover isn't worth shit, and my continued existence comes into serious question." He smiled lopsidedly, ignoring how Gabriel clenched their jaw. "Now you know why I didn't push my blood-brother, Gabriel. Not until ... not until the murder of my children started being an option he condoned, anyway. He doesn't tend to lose."
Gabriel made a deliberate effort to loosen their jaw, ignoring the wry twitch Loki put to the corner of their mouth. Oddly, most of what he felt from the god now was relief, and a sort of bitter amusement, and after a second Gabriel realised that the fear he'd felt before, the fear that had made Loki fight him, hadn't been fear of Odin, or death, or the age creeping through their veins. It had been fear of him, his reaction. Loki had been afraid of what he'd do, once he knew.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked again, very, very quietly, but part of him knew. Part of him knew.
"We made a deal," Loki said, almost sheepishly, bitterly defiant. "A deal ... A deal I can't keep, Gabriel, not without Idunn's apples. Without them, I won't have a body to share in return for my freedom. Not that it will matter to me by that point, but you ... I don't break my word, Gabriel, and especially not ... not to family, but this time I have promised something I can't give."
"And you thought ... what? That I'd put you back in the hole, try to find another vessel? Let Odin have you?" He didn't quite succeed in keeping the hurt from his voice, or the press of soul between them, but he was proud of the effort he'd managed to make. "Loki ..."
"No," the god whispered quietly. "Not ... Yes, a little. Gabriel ... survival is survival, and this puts you in a lot of danger. It would not ... I would not ..." Loki trailed off in frustration, leaving Gabriel only the wash of old hurt, bitterness, protective determination, strange surrender and the faint tang of fear to help him puzzle out his god's reasoning.
Loki was a Trickster and a liar and a thief, who would do pretty much anything to survive. But he'd made a deal, and whatever else the god would do, he would not break his word. Especially not when he gave it to family.
Even if that family killed him for keeping it.
"I don't hurt family, Loki," Gabriel said at last, resisting the urge to pull his soul a little away from the god's, resisting the old instinct to hide before his mouth could give him away, and leave them room to hurt him. Family. Always, family. "Not anymore, not again. Not you. Not you, not your children, not any of this ridiculous family you've ... you've let me into. I don't hurt family. I won't."
Loki was silent again. Just for a minute, silent and still, before he wrapped himself almost tentatively around Gabriel, around the archangel cradled inside his dying body, against his soul. Loki curled close, hard and bitter and warm, and sighed against Gabriel's mind.
"So what do we do, archangel?" he murmured, rich and tired and blackly laughing. "What do we do?"
And Gabriel thought, about gods and immortality, and death and goddesses, and the knowing look in Jor's eyes as they fled. He thought about other worlds, and other faiths, and how there was more than one way to skin a cat. He thought about how long Loki had been dying around him, and the tightness around Hel's eyes as she watched, the cold anger and faint exasperation he hadn't understood. Another thing he'd failed to take note of. Until now.
"I'll tell you what we do," he murmured, spreading his wings and looking north, to the cold shadows where Niflheim waited. "We go ask your very patient children what it is they've been plotting for years now, and hope Hel reins in the urge to growl at us for being so blind. That's what we do."
Loki blinked, long and hard.
Then he smiled.
Contd: Apples, Part II
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