The Lion in Spring

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes 'round in another form - Rumi

. . .

1. The Asgardian Patient

. . .

Loki looked at the young woman sitting on his couch, so thickly wrapped in a burly grey sweater despite the season that her shape seemed malformed. Her dark hair was hung around her like a hood, her hands remained buried within the woolen sleeves while she clutched at one of the plain but soft throw pillows he kept, and worst of all, there was the quiet that surrounded her entirely. He had never known her in stillness. That gave him the most information about the damage done, that silence. He knew about silences like hers. Many things could grow in those, few of them good. He tilted his head, considering these new wounds and the way she had earned them. "Daisy."

Her voice was a dull and lifeless rasp. "Coulson asked you to talk to me."

"He did, but I don't always do a thing because someone asks it of me." He was still considering her, watching the way her nails fretted at the edges of her clothes. The same fretting on Coulson's face, clawing at the edges and dragging the lines at his corners of his eyes down deeper. He himself had sent the request for a visit, thinking it would be better to talk in an environment she was less attached to than her own rooms. But yes. Coulson had asked for a favor. "He's afraid you're going to run."

"And you're going to talk me out of it."

"Am I?" Loki made a soft noise. "I haven't hardly become that predictable, I should hope."

A dark eye filtered out between strands of hair to dart a quick glance across him, then disappeared again. She didn't say anything else.

"We've been here before, us two, though I think I like this parallel even less." He frowned. "Daisy, I'm not much of a counselor, but I think we could agree I might know a few things about having your mind stolen from you, warped, and made not your own. To see the rubble of what comes after."

He could hear her breathing, a rasp in the still air.

"Having gotten this far, it's not so much just the sense of responsibility, is it? It's the guilt. I should have done more, said more, changed more. It's a haunt all its own, and not one easily banished. Cruel old ghosts, and heavy to bear. But not necessarily alone."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Loki leaned back in his chair, troubled but not surprised. "I have no intention of making you. I can't even keep you here to put up with my droning. If you don't want the company, my door is unlocked. I wouldn't trap you. By now, you know this of me."

The eye again, fleeting. At some point a while back, he had made a small, permanent magelight that traveled occasionally across the ceiling to amuse him. It put a glint in her iris, something that looked brittle under the layer of tears she was holding in. "You didn't like him, anyway."

He arched a dark eyebrow, frowning again at the new sharpness in her voice. "I didn't think often on Lincoln, Daisy, but nor then did I think poorly of him. I realize that seems paradoxical. Regardless of anything else, his care for you was genuine. What I thought doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter if Coulson or anyone else who thought they had some claim to an opinion felt he was right for you. He was the right one for now, and his loss hurts all the more for it. Wrapped in that weight."

He could sense her tightening in on herself, wondering vaguely if next the couch was going to rattle, or his desk. Or, perhaps, his bones. It didn't worry him. A couple people had ventured the idea of putting her back in one of those white boxes while Daisy processed an enormous amount of emotional information. For her own safety, naturally. He had, for once, taken a side outright and suggested along with others - Mack, particularly - that it would be a poor decision. Solitude fed despairs like a dog at feasting time. Loki knew that, too.

Tense, worried Mack. Silent May. And Fitz, caught between the whirlwind of a new relationship and the despair of his friends. The damage inside Daisy could be outlined by their faces. The atmosphere inside Coulson's lair was grim despite their recent victories. The costs were being counted and deemed steeply high. No, there had been little rest since Sanctuary. And there were always wars, civil or otherwise.

"You don't know."

"Of your specific pain, of the hole left by your lover? No, I don't. I know shapes like it, my own and others, and I know they won't change easily. Or soon. You have to find your own methods." He clasped long, bone white hands in his lap, taking her anger in the spirit intended than as the offense he might have assumed once. It wasn't with him, after all. It was driving deeper into herself, a razor that could cut something more than bone. "Someday you'll find a path that's right." He managed a slight smile. "Even if you fall into it."

"There's no fixing this."

"She says to me." Loki couldn't resist the old, sardonic roll of his eyes. "You had your skull torn open and your self poured out, filled instead with this ideal that parasite put together. You lived for his vision and set yours aside, and when you were ripped from his grotesque care you had your freedom returned to you, yes, but you were also left bleeding. A wound torn further asunder when the sky lit up for a mere second. A tale ended swiftly, but harsh enough to scar." He watched her fingers gnarl into the dark green pillow, looking like battered roots where bruises dotted the knuckles. "The scars fade, Daisy, and leave you stronger. If you choose to survive the healing. And the time. That's a weight all its own." He sighed, a soft exhale. "It's easy to choose not to. I expect you're more than that."

The silence spread to fill the room again. He thought that was going to be it, that he'd lost her, when to his surprise she chose to speak. Her voice was still raspy and full of that fresh pain, but there was something else in it, a heat that he found encouraging. "I can't survive it here. It hurts too much. Everyone's too close."

"Mm. Sometimes you have to become more deeply lost before you can find yourself."

The eye found him again, this time staying. Loki read the surprise in it. He shrugged in response. "I know these patterns. That's all."

"Was losing Frigga like this?" A peek of her profile came out of the veil of hair. Curiosity wedged in a slim space next to the grief and pain.

Loki opened his mouth, realizing he still couldn't give the answer outright. He managed something else instead. "Shapes repeat, let's say. It's easier to answer you through another's perception. Their pain is the worse, and the yet-unhealed." She furrowed her brow at him. "The All-Father, I mean. To speak as plainly as I might. The loss of his Queen… that left a scar whose depths have not yet been found. What they had between them, Daisy, was a crime to see sundered." He sighed, still uncomfortable. "They were not perfect, you must know. There were battles and ill-fitted moments. Disagreements of many stripes. But they found something right in each other and it made Asgard all the stronger for it, in the years after Bor's fall amongst the snow-spires of Jotunheim."

"What were they like?"

Her curiosity grew outward, just a little more. A hurt child that wanted a bedtime fable. It was a comfort, Loki supposed. A story of some distant fairy tale land, one that was real after all. That much he could give to help her carry her pain. It would hurt a little in the telling, but she was a friend, and he could take that much for a friend now.

"I don't know all. But I know a few things." Loki half-lidded his eyes, considering where best to start and what sort of tale to gather for her. "I know how they met, of course, and what that became, and of the first days of strife with Nornheim for their prophecy and then-untrusted magics." She squinted at him, the expression odd enough for him to look up and catch it. "Nornheim is an outlying province of Asgard, itself a city-state. Not a separate realm of the Nine. Like.. Ah…" He waved his hand. "Brooklyn, or something like it. It very nearly became a tenth during the All-Father's reign some four, five hundred years ago. But the seeds were sown well before that. Before I or Thor were born. And it all came because of that simple shortsightedness all us races seem to share - the inability sometimes to find another's perspective." He laughed once, shortly. "Like that Nick Fury. Even to the end, Frigga was oft Odin's one good eye…"

. . .

The prince shifted on the makeshift cot, listening to his armor scrape the cotton and the straw while the healers whipped around in the frenetic dance of bloody triage. Riskier than usual, no less. He lifted his head and saw through the veiled slits of his helm that his neighbor in the next rickety bed over was one of the opposition survivors. The healers didn't care what colors the wounded flew; they healed all just the same. Fortunate for himself, judged young Odin grimly, looking next at his gored leg. Nornheim might want him for a prize, should he take off his plain helm and plainer armor, but Nornheim's healers were neutral, as were all such healers among the realm. They saw only a body in need of care. Still, they had won the day, if not as cleanly as he would have liked. His men would assert claim over the tents and temples here soon enough. For now, they could play at this feeble peace while the remnants of the battle rang in his ears.

"Lay your head back down!" The snap came from behind him, a swift set of fingers pressing down on the bronze brow of his helm. He let his head drop with a thunk, grunting by way of response. He saw a flicker of light blue gauze from the healer's robe, lost it when she stepped closer to his neighbor. "Don't suppose you can tell me what your lot did to this fellow."

"Did our best to kill him, I should figure." He kept his voice lower and gruffer than usual. "Likely with a blade."

"Terribly useful, thank you." The shimmer of blue again. Green folded in with it, and now a glimpse of fine leather straps along her arms in place of less useful jewelry. The healer in nature's own finery. Odin saw light pour along the wounded enemy's form, the small Soul-Forge wheeling off in the hands of some unseen and silent helper. He listened to the woman's skirts whisper along the tamped down floor. "But at least you have the consideration to not suggest I finish your poor job. Twelve of your compatriots do so already. That's more tiring than your blood and gore, the lack of empathy." Her hands tugged at his helm. "Well, come on. I've a need to assess damage to your mind."

"There is none." Odin thunked his helm again against his cot. "Only the leg."

"So you're a healer as well as a blade. Would you like the day's oration on how many concussions go unfound and undiagnosed in the heat of battle? Perhaps you'd like to hear it in a century or three, when your words begin to blur and your irritation grows swift yet you know not why. Concussions are shaving centuries off our peoples and many more beside. But not on my watch. Helm. Off." She tugged at the side of it, her fingers curling underneath where it snugged close to his nape. Short nails tickled his skin.

Odin was young enough to feel justified in his stodginess, and he let her do most of the work. He looked up at the healer when his bronze helm pulled free, her sharp features under a crown of tight honey braids, and she looked down at him, still-dark hair and two bright eyes in a roundish face. His beard was still youthfully short, a lighter brown 'til it met with the rest near his ears. She a pretty wisp, and he then a stocky little thing. Not yet the full lion grown. She pursed her lips together at the sight of him, and then looked away to summon another device.

Odin thought she might have realized the name to go with his face, but she said nothing and there was no other sound of recognition. A layer of almost staticky ether passed along his brow and the readout in her hand earned a short nod. "Very well then," she said. "As you say. Your mind is fine. Now we can focus rightly on your flesh. Your spirit, well, that's to be your lookout."

"What's your name?" He found himself almost blurting the question, wasn't sure why. Then he found a reason. If she did recognize him, that would be a trail he could use to arrange her out of the way when his guards came, until he was well-clear of Nornheim's fringes. Safely, of course. He would honor the neutrality of the healers, as he had been taught.

She looked back down at him, considering. "Frigga," she said at last, the single word coming out shortly. She looked away. "I will not be your personal healer, warrior of Asgard. I do a courtesy, when asked." She smiled back at him, and again he had that prickling sense. "I will not ask yours. For you are only a warrior, and I will see many more of you today."

"I appreciate it, Healer Frigga." Whether she saw his name and title or no, it appeared to be of no interest to her. Good enough, he decided. He settled back down with a nod that could mean anything, prepared for the unavoidably painful work of cleaning the long gash in his leg. Field healing lacked certain of the niceties the palace could offer.

As the pain of their work increased, he grit his teeth once and said nothing. What this Frigga said was nothing more than the truth - he was a warrior of Asgard, and so he would bear all such pains silently. They would pass, and he would conquer.

As the elder healer ran a cold-spined bone-tender down his leg, he saw her looking at him with an expression of annoyance. He thought to say something to prove his pride and power, but a hand passed over his brow and he found himself falling quickly into a painless sleep instead.