Loki assisted Verda in placing the necklace around her neck and fastening the clasp. As he did so, he took note for the first time of the Midgardian clothing Verda appeared to be wearing, though he knew it to be an illusion. She would blend in perfectly with the mortal population. Though he hadn't seen Sif since regaining his faculties, he was certain when he did she would appear similarly clothed. Obviously Verda had more than a passing knowledge of how mortals of Midgard typically dressed, yet she'd told him she'd never been to Midgard. Why had she come and with Sif of all people?
Loki found those questions crowded out in his mind by what he had just experienced. His heart ached recalling the vision of an einherjar informing him of his mother's death as he sat helplessly locked away in a cell after he had thoughtlessly and inadvertently sent her murderer in her direction. He could still feel the Titan's enormous fingers around his neck. He could not consciously remember all of the memories of a life that he had not and would not now live. They had washed over him as a river swiftly flowing over its banks, though he was sure the entirety of it was locked away within his mind somewhere. He at least grasped the overarching theme of the narrative. What he did recall was more than enough to chill him to the marrow of his bones.
He had been correct in his feeling that it had been fate that had brought him, Selvig, Jane, and Darcy together. They'd had a role in his visions as well, though very different ones than they now played, at the moment Loki unable to recall every detail.
What he remembered most from the visions, however, was not any specific event, but the pain. Not physical but of another sort, the mental and emotional equivalent of a wound not unlike Thor's that had grown and festered. Each act he'd committed in response to that pain had only led to more of the same as if he existed in some hellish loop. Unfortunately the experience had not given him any insight related to Thor's murder as he had hoped, only raising more questions, though he at least had the satisfaction of knowing he was right. The trajectory of his life had been altered, though why and how that had been accomplished he didn't know. The 'why' was at least as important as the 'how.' Based on what he could recall, he would be glad of it if it were not for Thor's death. Had the only possible way for him to avoid the madness, the darkness he had succumbed to in that aborted future been for his brother to die?
Verda held the pendant in the palm of her hand, appearing to be making a thoughtful study of it. It seemed to Loki her countenance was of one who had believed something to be a myth but now had been handed tangible proof of its existence.
"Thank you...I will wear it always," Verda said before embracing Loki, "Though as it is fit for a queen I'm not worthy of it."
"My father didn't believe me fit to be a king." Loki responded.
"As you will prove to him, your father was wrong and not for the first time," Verda replied.
Loki was somewhat shocked at Verda's statement. It seemed to him that everyone but himself believed Odin to be infallible.
"You should dress," Verda said as she spied the bag that had held the stones on top of Loki's folded clothing, picking it up, "I'll collect them."
"Don't-" Loki began, fearful after what he had just experienced.
"It's alright," Verda interrupted, "I know what they are. I wanted to know if you did. My sister used to speak of them. I suppose it's easier for a Prince of Asgard to obtain such things."
"I stole them from a purveyor of rare goods I'd had dealings with in the past. I replaced them with fakes. He likely acquired them by similar means."
"It's frightening to think of such objects falling into the hands of those who don't understand their power. It is no less terrifying to think of them falling into the hands of those who do," said Verda.
"You sound like my father."
"What did they show you?" Verda asked
"What will no longer be...It doesn't matter," Loki replied, attempting to outwardly dismiss his experience with the Norn Stones as insignificant, though the unease and disquiet he could not fully mask in his tone betrayed him.
"It does matter...I am from that future that will no longer be."
"How is that possible? Even my father can't travel through time," Loki said, baffled by Verda's confession.
"We met only once, as children. We never spoke again after that day. When you returned to Asgard to save us from Hela, you spoke the same words you said to me before you pulled me from the pit in the forest," Verda told him, Loki quiet for a moment as he searched his memory before his face lit up as he recalled the long ago incident of which she spoke.
"That was you? I remember that day! For once I was the hero."
"After Thanos attacked the ship, I wanted to stay, to fight, to share your fate. The others lied to me. They told me you were going to lead us to safety. It wasn't until we arrived in Midgard I learned you were not among the survivors. You were thought to be dead before but somehow I knew...but this time…" Verda said as tears began to flow from her eyes as she called up the memory as vivid to her as Loki's recent experience had been to him, Loki reaching out, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, "For five years I honored you...in rain, snow, the bitterest cold, each day without fail.
"When the day came to fight he who had taken your life, though not a warrior I volunteered willingly. I wished to be the one to slay him, to avenge you. If I failed I would have been pleased to die and join you in Valhalla. I hated Midgard and life itself in a universe without you in it. After the battle Thanos had been vanquished, those he had rendered dust by the power of the ancient stones returned to us. Yet for me nothing had changed. At the monument as I honored you a man approached me. He told me all that had happened could be undone if I would help him. He would take me back to Asgard. You would live once more."
"What was it he wanted you to do?" Loki asked.
"There was something hidden in New Asgard. They had been brought there by Thor after the battle. He said that his son was dying, that the cure was a plant that once grew in Midgard but was now extinct. He needed what Thor had hidden away so that he could go back to a time when this plant still existed and obtain it to save his son's life. I was sure I knew where to find what he sought, the crypt under the museum in one of the sepulchers that held the bodies of the honored dead of Midgard who long ago had fought the frost giants at your father's side. Few knew of its existence. Your brother once told me of it. I had visited him to give him a gift I had made for him for Yule. He invited me to join him for a drink. We spoke of many things. He mourned for Asgard, for all who had been lost...for you."
Loki's mind processed the story Verda had just told him. Just as his visions had done, it left him with more questions.
"Was this man's name Coulson?"
"He wouldn't tell me his name. If I were to be discovered I couldn't give away his identity," Verda explained.
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"What of the you from this time who already existed?"
"I know not what became of my past self. I thought she had ceased to exist upon my arrival. I wasn't sure how it worked. When the man took me to the past and to the portal to Asgard, he said everything could now be different. I was determined that they would be. I overcame my fear. I placed myself in the places I knew you frequented."
"He knew of a portal to Asgard? Did you know what was to happen to Thor?" Loki asked, Verda bowing and shaking her head.
"I swear to you...I never wished any harm to come to him," Verda told him, her voice heavy with guilt, breaking with emotion.
"Even if it meant I would be king?"
"I had thought it better that you would not be. What time does a king have for any one person, even his queen?" Verda said.
Loki thought back to his childhood, how his father had little time to spend with either of his sons and more recently, the night of Thor's funeral, how he had questioned his father's absence as he had consoled his mother. He now knew the reason behind it, the news of Laufey's murder, but it also made Verda's point.
"In my time, I feared your brother would go to his death from drink. After all that had happened there was nothing that could heal his broken spirit," said Verda.
Loki recalled the vision of his death. Thor had been subdued, helpless to come to his aid, forced to watch his brother die in front of him. It was a similar scenario in reverse that Loki had recently experienced.
"If this man you search for is the same who took me back...he said if I told anyone, if anyone came to Midgard to seek him out, he would kill them. I was thinking with my heart and not my head. It cost your brother his life. When we return to Asgard I will leave the palace and live out my days alone in shame as I deserve," Verda said, her head bowed.
"You will not leave the palace...you will leave my father's service. Never again will you toil for another. You will leave your chambers for my own."
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Phil Coulson, dressed in a dark suit, a pair of sunglasses shielding his eyes from the desert sun, stepped out of the black car in the parking lot of the bar and took stock of his surroundings as he had been trained long ago to do and as he always did. He noticed that the car in which he had arrived was already coated with a layer of dirt and dust. He was glad for once that he wasn't driving Lola, his cherry red and highly modified 1962 Corvette. His eyes fell on the old beige Pinzgauer parked a few vehicles from his own. He didn't see many of those around thus it had grabbed his attention. In a desert environment, it would be quite handy.
Entering the establishment, Coulson approached the bar, Rita greeting him with her customary smile.
"You in the C.I.A. or something?" Rita asked jokingly.
"Or something," Coulson responded.
"What can I get ya?"
"Nothing at the moment. I'm meeting someone."
"That fella over there? He said he was meeting someone, too." Rita said, pointing to the same booth where Loki and Selvig had sat the night before.
"Yes. Thank you," Coulson said, leaving the bar and making his way to the booth, sliding into it across from its lone occupant, "Mr. Krieger."
"Coulson." Krieger said.
Coulson recognized the man with the dirty blond hair sitting across from him, a pack on the seat next to him, yet he sensed something was off. He concluded the man's nose was different, somewhat crooked. Perhaps he had broken it recently, but if that was the case, he would think it would still be swollen and bruised. It had only been a week since he had met with him for the first time. His voice, as Coulson had noted during their short conversation over the phone, had also altered.
"What would you like to drink?" Krieger asked.
"I don't drink on the job," Coulson answered.
"We're in a tavern. A tavern is where one goes to drink. You will have a drink with me," Krieger answered.
"All right. A bourbon and soda."
Krieger slid from the booth and approached the bar. Coulson leaned out of the booth, keeping a careful eye on the man as he spoke to the bartender, the blond woman pouring the drinks, placing them on a tray. Krieger returned with a tall glass mug of beer and a shot of whiskey and a smaller glass of fizzing cola. Coulson watched Krieger empty the shot glass into the mug of beer as he lifted his own drink from the tray, taking a small sip from it before setting it down. He had watched the drink being prepared by the bartender and immediately brought to him by Krieger and had seen no opportunity for it to be adulterated but he wasn't taking any chances.
"Is something wrong with your drink?" Krieger asked.
"No. It's very good. A simple drink but not many get it right. My compliments to the bartender."
"Rita."
"Rita," Coulson repeated, "Mr. Krieger, I've come a long way…"
"I dare say I've come much farther," Krieger responded, appearing to glance around the bar before lifting his mug and emptying half of it.
Lowering his mug, Krieger found himself alone in the booth, an empty space across from him where Coulson had been seated. Scanning the immediate vicinity once again, he slid from the booth, grabbing his pack. Coulson's suit jacket lay in the booth, his shirt within it, his tie still knotted around the neck, his pants having slid onto the floor where his socks and shoes rested. Inside the shirt Krieger noticed movement. Holding his hand out over the table, a shoebox appeared in it. After setting the box on the table, he reached into the buttoned shirt within the suit jacket, removing a frog.
Krieger placed the frog into the box, replacing the lid before rifling through the clothing. He came upon a small, round device, storing it away in a pocket on the front of his pack. From under the jacket he produced a gun in a holster which he placed inside his pack. Folding Coulson's clothing he stuffed it into his pack as well. Lifting his mug, he finished the other half of his drink before setting it down. Krieger picked up Coulson's drink, emptying it in one swallow. Coulson was right, it was very good. Krieger, slinging his pack over his shoulder, lifted the shoebox from the table.
As Krieger crossed the bar, heading to the exit, Sif and Verda rose from another table, following him to the door. Before exiting the bar, shielded from view by the women behind him, Krieger's form morphed into that of Loki, once again having converted his clothing to his preferred color.
The man and woman, dressed as conservatively as Coulson had been who had arrived at the bar shortly after him in a vehicle almost identical to Coulson's, paid no mind to the three as they exited and walked past their vehicle.
Loki and the two women reached the Pinzgauer in the parking lot where Selvig sat behind the wheel. The women climbed into the back as Loki sat in the passenger seat, setting his pack on the floorboard, holding the shoebox in his lap. Selvig looked over at the shoebox as a croaking sound emanated from within it.
"Coulson?" Selvig asked, Loki peering over at Selvig with a mischievous grin, all the answer Selvig needed, "Sounds like he has a frog in his throat," Selvig quipped as he started the vehicle.
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After Selvig had brought the vehicle to a stop in the desert, far from town and the road, Loki grabbed his pack, placing it over his shoulder, carrying the shoebox as he and the others opened the doors and stepped out. After walking a short distance, Loki put the shoebox down, lifting the frog from it and placing it on the dry, dusty ground. Verda held out the shackles Sif had earlier returned to her possession, Loki taking them from her.
Coulson suddenly found himself human again, standing nude and speechless under the desert sun with an expression of shock and embarrassment. Noting the presence of the women he quickly covered his nether region with both hands as Sif groaned, turning her back, the second time that day she had been treated to such an unwelcome sight.
"What the hell….?" Coulson managed to say.
"Get dressed," Loki commanded him, removing the clothing and shoes from his pack and tossing them in front of Coulson.
The four waited as Coulson nervously put his clothes back on, Sif continuing to stand with her back to the man. After Coulson had dressed and straightened his tie, his hands shaking, Loki shackled his hands behind his back, Coulson too flustered to ask questions. Sif turned back to face Coulson, Loki gesturing for her to approach, she taking hold of Coulson's arm in a firm grip.
"Before I go…" Loki said as he approached Selvig, removing the umbrella from his pack, Mjolnir returning to its true form as Selvig stared at the hammer in Loki's hand in astonishment.
"Mjolnir..." Selvig gasped in disbelief.
Loki held out the hammer, Selvig wrapping his hand around it. As Loki let go, the hammer dropped heavily to the ground, Selvig struggling to lift it. Loki, grinning, picked it up, supporting it as Selvig held it between his two hands, staring down at it in awe.
"We must return. Goodbye, Erik Selvig," Loki said, lowering the hammer to his side, "Þakka þér enn og aftur fyrir hjálpina. (Thank you again for your help)."
"Verði þér að góðu. Mun ég sjá þig aftur? (You're very welcome. Will I see you again?)" Selvig asked.
"Þú veist aldrei. Enda er ég guð óheilla. (You never know. I am the god of mischief,)" Loki said with a grin befitting the moniker.
Turning from Selvig, Loki joined Verda, Sif and Coulson, "Heimdall, bring us home!" Loki called out.
Selvig found himself nearly blinded and knocked back on his feet by the bright white light of the Bifrost as it descended as swiftly as a bolt of lightning. Blinking, he looked to where the four had once stood, cautiously approaching the pattern burned into the ground.