Chapter Text
They landed about two hours later. Thor wanted to tear the building down brick by brick, but they convinced him to get Loki’s body from the well first. They strode silently across the field, all on edge and aware of their surroundings, ready for an attack or ambush. Loki remained silent unless spoken to.
“Can’t be great to be back here, huh?” Tony asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Loki replied. “I hardly remember it at all.”
“ Your memories crumple, like a foil. They come to the forefront of your mind, but they become hazy near instantly. A ripple effect. The memories nearest to you, the ones that have occurred most recently, those are the ones first forgotten.”
“Which would be your death.” And whoever killed you.
No one seemed to know what to make of that, so no one said anything at all until they made it to the wooden cover. Something about it struck Wanda as weird, off, but it wasn’t until Steve and Tony hauled it up and away that she figured out why.
“Holy shit.”
“Is that…”
“A staircase.” Wanda leaned forward, staring at the spiraling stairs going down, down, down until darkness consumes and she couldn't see anything else.
“So,” Tony mumbled. “Not a well after all.”
“No. Not at all.”
Loki remained silent as thunder rolled overhead.
………………
Wanda and Loki led the way. Tony and Steve second behind them, Tony’s suit being the brightest object they had and thus, their only source of light. Loki had offered to create an orb to help but when asked if it would only drain his seidr faster, he hadn’t given an answer.
Thor had adamantly refused he do anything but be present. Loki had complied. They walked for ages. Tony complained, but it was half hearted. There was a dark, depressing atmosphere surrounding them and Wanda knew they were all thinking the same thing.
How many more bodies are we going to find, other than Loki’s?
It felt like it went on for miles, but they’d only been walking for twenty minutes. The thought of HYDRA agents carrying a corpse—maybe multiple—down the stairs for twenty minutes made Wanda want to laugh, but her thoughts sobered her instead.
Who says they didn’t just drag them?
At the thirty minute mark, Loki stopped. Steve was the first to notice. “Loki? What’s wrong?”
Thor pushed his way to the front of the group, so panicked over anything and everything the illusion had done that he has deemed wrong .
“Brother? Are you well?”
“Wanda,” Loki began slowly. Down there, the lighting was too dim to make out his expression, but Steve thought his skin might be more transparent than it was before. “I know it has been…quite some time ago, but do you recall how I said seidr decays?”
Steve had to strain his memory. The fight in Kamar Taj was so long ago now. But Wanda did seem to remember.
“I do.”
“Think of magic as a match,” Loki began to explain. He turned to face them, but Steve noticed that the movement wasn’t as fluid as it should've been. It was almost jerky, maybe halting, like he wasn’t entirely in control of his body. An uneasy feeling sank into his stomach. They were missing something obvious, weren’t they?
“Okay?” Wanda clung to his words, brow furrowed as she listened intently.
“The fire spreads outwards, eating anything in its path, desperate to survive.” Loki spread his hands. Steve noticed that they were shaking. We’re missing something big. “But it can’t double back. It can never return to its origin. There is not enough wood there to survive.”
“Yeah?”
“Think of my seidr as the fire, my body its origin.” The way he tilted his head forward allowed the minimal light they had to cast upon his face. All Steve saw was sorrow . “I cannot go any further. This illusion I hold is mere seidr, cobbled together from the tattered remains of my consciousness. The closer I get, the less this will hold. I’m sorry.”
Wanda asked, “We’re on our own then?” Loki nodded. “Can you stay until you…until we get too close?”
“I will do my very best.”
They made it less than five more steps before Loki’s illusion flickered then vanished. For a long time, they were silent as the reality came crashing down. Steve was the first to move, taking a deep breath and raising his shield as he took Loki’s place at Wanda’s side.
“Let’s keep moving.”
…………………..
It wasn’t even a a full five minutes later before they finally reached the bottom and tunnels stretched out on any and all sides of them. They all groaned, because they’d have to search but they couldn’t even begin to guess which way Loki would be.
The morbid fact that they were searching for a corpse strikes again, but Steve recovered first and raised his shield as he stepped towards the first hall and declared,
“Let’s stay together. Just in case.”
They knew he had a point. They’d thought it was a simple water well, not…this. Beneath their feet, their boots splashed in once stagnant puddles of water, and Wanda couldn’t help but muse to herself that at least now she knew why Loki was always soaking wet.
They dumped his body down here and left it to rot. Anger filled her veins. She choked it down. It wouldn’t help here. Cells lined the walls. All empty. She suddenly wondered if they’d even recognize him. What if another tunnel held dozens of bones? What if Loki was one of them? Could Thor identify his brother just from his skeleton?
The thought made Wanda sick but she carried on regardless. They’d come this far. She didn’t care what the others thought. She wasn’t going to leave without Loki, even if they did.
She used that thought to motivate her to press on.
………………
Thirty minutes of searching. They found him in the third tunnel, at the furthest end from the entrance.
A body. He was still a body. He’d been dead for years but there was still a body, flesh and all, lying before them. Steve broke the lock on the cell and they slowly filed in. Tony swore loudly, the word echoing in the silence. The room was cramped, barely big enough to fit all of them. Hell, barely big enough to fit Loki .
Wanda felt nauseous but she couldn’t make herself look away. Behind her, Thor let out a bellowing cry of rage and slammed his fist into the wall once, twice, three times. She dizzily hoped he didn’t bring the whole place down on them.
Loki’s corpse was slumped against the far wall, head hung to his chest and thinning, black strands of hair limp around his face. His skin was white, clothing sopping wet and stained with old blood. Tony cursed again and for some reason, it amused Steve in a sort of morbid way.
They knew they were looking for a body, so why did it feel like they were shocked that they found it?
Maybe because you were holding a conversation with him less than five minutes ago. A voice in the back of Steve’s head murmured as he slowly approached, the only one brave enough to do so. His eyes wandered over the thin limbs, noting the ancient, rusted shackles around Loki’s thin wrists and ankles, linking chains binding him to the walls. A fleeting thought crossed through his mind. Why would you restrain a corpse?
Behind him, Wanda couldn’t look for more than a few seconds. Because she’d seen this before. She’d seen Loki in this state, sitting in this exact position before. Because if they met somewhere with a wall, that was how he slumped against it, exhausted.
Here in this cell is where she thinks she’s closest to him, wherever he may be, in the waking world.
Steve crouched carefully in front of the body, reaching out to break the chains. That was when it finally clicked. He wasn’t sure why, but as his fingers hovered inches from undoubtedly cold flesh, he just…paused. There was a body in front of them. All this time, they’d been looking for a body and Loki never corrected them but he should’ve had had to, because hadn’t he been rather direct the first time he brought it up?
Steve swallowed back bile as his mind raced. “Hey Thor?” “Loki Laufeyson has not lived for a very long time.” “How long does it take an Asgardian to decompose? “I have been dead for many years.”
Thor’s tone was rough. Angry yet choked with tears. He won’t look at Loki’s body. Steve couldn’t blame him. It was a hard sight to see.
“A long time. But Loki was not Asgardian. He was Jotunn.”
That was right. Thor told Wanda that a while ago, didn’t he? That didn’t negate Steve’s question, but he restructured it all the same.
“How long does it take their bodies to decompose?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. On Asgard we were not given much education on the Jotnar beyond their being our enemies. Why?”
“Because…” Steve looked back at the body. He was almost afraid to touch it now. Even more afraid to say his next words. He didn’t want to get Wanda’s hopes up. He didn’t want to get Thor’s hopes up. “Because he doesn't look dead.”
Silence fell so hard and fast you could’ve heard a pin drop. “What?” Bruce asked meekly from the back of the group.
Tony remarked, “I don’t know, cap, he looks pretty terrible to me.”
“Yeah, but look at him, Tony,” Steve stressed. “Does this really look like a corpse that’s been down here for years? Loki said he’s dead, that the illusion we saw was just the last vestige of his magic manifesting into a shape. But it was too coherent, wasn’t it? It knew too much, it was too aware .” He looked at Wanda. “How long has it been since you started dreaming of him?”
“I don’t…months,” Wanda replied. “Maybe two years? I haven’t really been keeping track.”
“Thor, do you think Loki’s magic is that powerful that it could hold his consciousness so long as to start communicating with someone after death? Especially for as long as he’s been?”
Thor looked frantic, hopeless, lost . “I don’t know. I know very little about seidr. It is considered a woman’s craft, on Asgard. Loki and mother were the only ones in our family who practiced it.”
Steve’s brow furrowed. His heart was racing. “Loki said magic decays. But decay doesn’t suddenly start just because he reached out. It doesn’t hold off until he’s able to grip onto someone else.”
“What are you implying?” There was hope in Wanda’s voice, the very kind Steve was trying to avoid. But if he was right about this…or better, if Loki was wrong …
“I have been dead for many years. ”
Steve’s words, whispered though they were, were heard by all. “What if Loki isn’t dead?”