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thebifrostgiant · 5 years

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If You Know Where to Look - Part 16

Summary: in which you do something very brave to someone very foolish

Part 1 / Previous

Read on Ao3

Word Count: 2,689

Rating: T (for now)

Pairing: Loki/Reader

Chapter 16: A Knife by the Handle

The night air is cold and nips at your cheeks, but it can’t steal away the touch of warmth that has unfurled in your chest, the pleased, wide-awake sort of contentment that lingers long after leaving the Café. The night was fun, in a way you had never realized could be possible considering where you are and who you’re with. But as you sneak a glance at Loki, taking in the relaxed slope of his shoulders and the ease in his face, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible any longer.

Loki is... different here. Maybe it’s something about the Midgardian air, but he’s... actually good company. And it’s not just that you are willing to tolerate his presence because there is no other option here where strangers abound and he’s the only trace of familiarity available to you. The fact is, a marvel in and of itself, Loki, like this, is someone you’d have liked to get to know before all these things happened. If a thousand other paths had been taken, if fate had had a different forecast. If he weren’t a prince, if you’d never met Einvald, if you hadn’t cut yourself, if he’d never been meant to marry Ülle, if he’d never made you her servant...

If he hadn’t, you realize suddenly, struck by the thought, if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here. You would be tucked away in your cozy farmhouse, grinding sweet-smelling oats or chopping leeks and mutton for stew, or doing the wash up and trying to keep Búrakki from chewing at your sleeves. You’d be home, happy and complacent and only vaguely aware that anything had happened to Asgard’s youngest prince.

And Loki... Loki would still be here. You’d thought, at first, that all your effort to try to save him hadn’t made a difference but... that is not precisely true. Because Loki would be here regardless of what became of you. At least, though, with you here, he is not alone. It is a small solace, certainly, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth something. It has to be worth something. It can’t just all be coincidence, can it? When it all leads back to here? Even so, even if there is nothing you’re meant to do, even if there is nothing you can do, it isn’t meaningless. Not to Loki.

You can hardly imagine being by yourself in a place you don’t understand, how crushingly despondent it would be to have no way of knowing where to go or how to get back and no one to turn to. Without even knowing why you were there in the first place. And Loki is trying, beyond trying, to be... good to you, to talk to you and buy you hot chocolate and laugh with you, even when he does not have to by any obligation, and you can only conclude that he is grateful to not be completely alone. Maybe he even likes your company.

The light of the moon is reflected by his eyes as he catches your gaze, silver glinting on green, and he smiles at you. It’s a real smile, untarnished with arrogance and scorn and without the underpinnings of mischief at its foundation, full and unguarded and toothy.

Yeah. Maybe he does.

You smile back at him, taking a step closer until the sound of both your footsteps walking side by side blurs into one continuous rhythm.

“Nice night,” says Loki, words white against the darkness around him. He seems ever unbothered by the chill, like it cannot reach him. Enjoys it even. But now, there’s a slight tremor to his voice, repressed amusement he can’t quite hide entirely. A bluff.

“It’s freezing!” you protest, despite knowing that you’re feeding right into his game. Or maybe because of it.

“Oh, it’s not so bad as all that.” His voice is far too mild. It is and he knows it, even if he happens to like the cold. “No need to complain about it.”

“And yet, I seem to have noticed that you’re wearing a jacket. Interesting, considering that it’s positively balmy.”

“Well...” Loki hedges, “Clearly, the purpose of this,” he gestures to the rather nice wool coat, black with lighter grey buttons down both sides of the front, “is not for warmth, but to look dapper. Which it is fulfilling, is it not?”

You snort, not deigning to answer that. It’s transparent, painfully so, the lack of denial, but you can’t quite bring yourself to lie, and, more to the point, you don’t want to encourage Loki’s equally obvious bullshit. Or, at least, you don’t want to overtly encourage it. Subtly, perhaps. As long as you can pretend you don’t enjoy it.

“Besides, that’s not what I meant.” You look up at Loki, but he’s looking at something to the left.

“Better than going blind from reading so much useless information?”

“Much better.” He turns to you sharply with a grin.

“Even the hot chocolate?” you say, brimful of innocence. You still cannot understand what was so awful about it to him. But then, Loki’s food preferences are always hard to account for.

His face goes sour, just for a second, even though he manages to wipe the look away and give you a very good impression of benign confusion.

“What do you mean? The hot chocolate was the best part.”

You nudge him with your elbow.

“You hated it.”

He shakes his head.

“I did not. I quite enjoyed it, in fact.” You’d almost believe him, so good is his lie. But you’d seen the grimace on his face when he’d taken a sip, and there was no real way for him to deny it.

You giggle, and his seriousness cracks, slowly but steadily, until he is laughing as well.

You quiet down as you open the door to the inn and creep up the stairs, avoiding the most creaky ones and trying to muffle the rest so you don’t wake the other guests. You turn the corner to your room, Loki a half step behind, and come to an abrupt halt. The man is there, the one who watches you at every turn and makes you wary and ill at ease. He’s leaning against the wall by the door, conveniently between yourself and the relative safety of the room. There is no reason for him to be there. You aren’t sure where his room actually is, but it is not on this side of the inn, this much you are certain of. Of course you are. You’ve been paying as much careful attention to him as he has you, as has Loki, out of necessity. Because something is very wrong.

Behind you, you can hear Loki draw in a quick, alarmed breath. There’s a split second where nothing happens, the stillness absolute, and then he wraps his arm around your shoulders, pulling you towards himself defensively.

“The knife,” he whispers urgently in your ear.

Then he pushes his way in front of you, his body a barrier between the other man and yourself. But you are frozen, rooted to the spot like a tree beside a riverbank, unable to move. Your hands don’t want to cooperate, even though your mind is screaming at you to do as Loki said, to arm yourself. Even a tiny blade can cut deep. But you can’t, somehow you can’t, and all you can do is stand and watch in mute, stagnant panic.

But the man is not watching you now. He’s not even looking at you. His dark, chary gaze is on Loki, and there’s no mistaking the malice so open in its depths.

“May I help you?” Loki asks, a facsimile of politeness even though there’s not point in acting when both of them have revealed themselves as they have. But while his voice is blithe and mannered, his hands are clenched and there’s tension so easily evident in the rigidity of his back.

The man does not answer. He sizes Loki up, pure hatred on his face, and it’s strange, so strange and so foreboding. He cannot possible have cause for hating Loki. Loki, who has done nothing to him whatsoever, has not said a single word to him until this very moment. Loki, who has not done anything wrong at all, not in a long time.

He is taller than Loki, which makes him very tall indeed, and broader at the shoulders. His eyes cut to you for an instant, and then he must have figured he could take Loki in a fight, because the next thing you know, he’s shoving Loki, hard, against the wall, and there’s a terrible thud as his head collides with the doorframe.

Loki snarls, vicious as a wolverine, even as he blinks rapidly, eyes loosing focus with pain. He grapples against the man’s hold on his jacket collar, arms clashing and as he moves, you can see that there’s blood on the paint, bright red smudged where Loki’s skull had just been, and you pant, horrified.

“The knife! Get the knife!” Loki says through gritted teeth. He manages to loose the man’s hands, slipping under his arm, but the man is not deterred.

But at his words, you shake yourself free of the grip of your fear and you nod frantically as you fumble the knife into your shaky-handed grip.

The man tries to lunge at Loki again, but, swift as a shrike descending on a field mouse, you step in front of him, blade drawn out and aimed toward him, and he stops short of impaling himself on it.

He looks at it in shock, then at you, then at Loki in rapid succession, and you jerk the dagger upward in warning, holding it high despite it all, right in his face.

“No,” you say, decisive and ruthless. Somehow, you take a step forward and he is forced to step back.

The man holds his hands up, like he’s trying to calm a growling dog, and looks down at you.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he say in a tone so condescendingly placating that does nothing but make your fury catch fire. “Be careful with a thing like that. You don’t want someone to get hurt.”

Someone to get hurt, you think, disgusted. As if he hasn’t hurt Loki already, for reasons you cannot ascertain, as if he would not hurt you as well given the chance. This poor mortal has no idea.

“Don’t I?”

For all that the words are lowly spoken, gentle almost, they are steel underneath. Cold, unrepentant steel, a threat and a warning and a challenge. Because the tiny blade is enough. The man is afraid of it. It could harm him badly, and he knows it, and you know that you have the upper hand. Suddenly, the dagger is a welcome weight, warm in your palm and heartening, and you sneer in a way that would make Loki proud.

And speaking of-

“Trust me, you don’t want to find out if she means it.”

Loki stands behind you, and you can imagine the look of him, equal parts regal and deadly and calm, still waters hiding the riptide, and the man hesitates, fear flashing in his face like lightning, caught against his odds.

He glances around, and only then do you notice the open doors, the other guests peering out or standing in the hall to determine the source of the commotion, to watch it all play out. You must look insane, baring your teeth like some feral creature and brandishing a weapon, the man a victim of you to their eyes. You realize as the dagger starts swaying that you are shaking, your whole body caught up in the fright-filled rush.

He turns toward the stairs, tensed to run, pushing his advantage as you falter. A bystander grabs him by the bicep, in a grip far from friendly and quite tight.

“You’re staying right where you are,” he growls at the man, and backs up his words by holding him in place.

They... they’d seen it, then, all of it. They knew the man had hurt Loki, and you were acting defensively. You feel lighter, awash with relief, but whatever desperation had set you in motion trickles away like meltwater. You put the strangely blurry knife away, and wipe at your eyes, surprised to find your face wet with tears.

A woman looks between you and Loki, taking in his bleeding head and your hiccuping breathing, and her face softens in sympathy.

“Why don’t you two head on into your room and sit down for a bit? We’ll give our reports to the officer, and make sure this guy can’t hurt anyone else, you just take it easy and get cleaned up. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

You’re not sure if she means you, or Loki, or both, but you nod hazily, and Loki fiddles with the key until the door opens, and you’re stepping into what’s become the closet thing to a home that you’ve known since being here, and it hits you then that it’s over.

Loki pulls the door shut behind him and leans on it, clutching the back of his head and grimacing. Your dread rises back up full force.

“Are you alright?” you ask, slightly high-pitched because it looks like no, he’s not. He blinks a few times, confused, and when he looks at you, it takes a second for him to respond.

“Yes, I’m fine. The mortal did not seriously hurt me.” You bite at your lip, not quite certain, and he frowns at your worry. “Head wounds always bleed a lot. It’s much worse than it looks.”

But his fingers find their way back into his hair, and his reassuring tone does little in the face of it.

“Sit down,” you say softly, still badly shaken, and you’re sure Loki is much more so than he’s letting on, if he’s not genuinely concussed.

He does so, scooting back until he’s against the headboard on one side. He gestures to the empty space beside him, and you sink down on the soft quilt with a sigh.

“I am fine,” Loki says again, a half-smile pulling at his lips.

There’s truth in his eyes, and if nothing else, he really believes it. He probably is. But you’ve never seen anything but clear-eyed focus, good or bad, from him, and the momentary fogginess doesn’t set well. But that could just as easily be shock.

You nod, but you don’t really know what to say.

Silence enfolds you for a long, blissful moment, and you lean back against the pillows, letting your eyes shut and the remnants of your fear slip away like water from a leaky bucket.

Then Loki lets out a laugh.

“I wouldn’t have been nearly so merciful,” he murmurs, and for a moment you think he’s being derisive. But his eyes are closed when you look at him, and he seems tired more than anything.

“I didn’t stick him with it,” you agree, with as much regret in your voice as you can impart. Truly, you’re not sure how to feel. You hadn’t hurt him back, but... you could have. It would have been easy. Satisfying, maybe. But... he was mortal. Killing him wouldn’t have been a fair price for what may be only a minor injury, and stabbing him could well have been fatal.

“Here,” you say, holding the dagger out to Loki once he opens his eyes. “Maybe you had better hold onto this, now that he’ll be gone.”

He glances at it, but doesn’t take it right away.

“And deprive me of the opportunity to watch you defend me so ardently?” He raises his eyebrows, and then grins. “You looked like a valkyrie.”

You laugh at that, at how preposterous that is.

“A stoat, possibly. Perhaps one with a toothache,” you say, amused.

But Loki is quiet as he gently takes the knife from your hand. You look at him, and he still has that smile, something quite serious therein. You think, maybe, he wasn’t joking.

Part 17

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