A Lullaby for Gods chapter 38

m m n h k this took me so long and I'm still just HMMMMMMMM at this

All Around Me Are Familiar Faces

Loki finds everyone asleep when he gets to the bunker. Not that that's any surprise, given the events of the day. James is passed out on the common room couch, tossing and turning. The pool master and their best friend are huddled together on the loveseat not even bothering with a blanket or changing out of their clothes, not that they had any to change into. Loki should probably let them go home for a moment. It's not like they're looking after James as much as James is looking out for them.

And besides, they look like they need the comfort of being in someplace familiar right now.

He doesn't wake them, though. They need all the sleep they can get. Instead he goes to the library to the empty wall across the door, running a hand over it to activate the runes. When the working falls away, he's faced with a shelf full of bottles – back-up potions he's stored in every single bunker he has, just in case he has to hide – and he reaches up the highest level for the bottle of whiskey he has there.

It's not mead, and all it's going to do is give him a slight buzz, but it's better than nothing, and he really needs a drink right now. 

He goes to the kitchen to get himself a glass, fighting the urge to just drink straight from the bottle and silently starts emptying the whiskey bottle, staring down at the table as he tries to clear his head. Rose had been angry, and people say things in anger, but even when they say they never mean it, there's always some truth to everything they say.

They’d been almost joined at the hip, what with their love for knowledge and magic, so this – this - 

(hurts)

- reminds him a little too much of his former life. Of what he's left behind on Asgard. She has every right to be angry, of course, so he wouldn't blame her if she never forgave him and just worked with him to make sure that whoever's targeting the Safehouse will be gone and will stay gone.

He supposes that's the mindset he should be in right now. He should focus on what should be done instead of wasting away mental faculties on drinking. He should move on to the next step, just like he should. Just like he's always done before.

He still finishes the bottle of whiskey. 

He doesn't get drunk on it, of course, just a little tipsy, but that's fine because he has things to do.

He checks the wards around the bunker, for James' sake, and when the pool master and their best friend wake up, he lets them go back to the Safehouse for a little bit to get more sleep and some new clothes. He bumps into Elizabeth as he pops by the flat, and then helps her pack clothes for everyone else staying at the hospital while she updates him on Cecil and Dave's status.

Neither of them have woken up. The doctors have said that this is normal, especially since they're still freshly out of surgery and are doped up on anesthetic, but everyone's worrying anyway.

He simply nods, finding he has nothing to say, and then he skywalks back to the bunker where James is. 

And then, because he finds himself suffocating in the tense air there – he and James aren't the closest of friends, after all – he skywalks to the island he and Cecil had talked once, on that one day where everything had seemed awful, but the circumstances felt as if it could be alleviated.

Loki sits down on the sand harshly, kicking up a few grains as he does so. It's nighttime here, and it's cloudy, so it's dimmer than it would be than if the moon had been visible, but he can't bring himself to care right now.

It's quiet here. Quiet and alone and he can pretend that he has time to sort things out and make mistakes he can easily fix.

There's two kids in the hospital who might never wake up.

Loki picks up a rock, not even noticing the sparks of green that race up his arm in his anger, and he tosses it into the waves where it makes a small explosion of a splash. He grits his teeth, frustrated, and then picks up another rock to do the same thing, as if that’s going to help him.

It doesn't. Instead it just makes him even more frustrated, and he wants to destroy something. He wants to blow something up. He wants -

There's a faint plop in the water, several feet away from him. The plop itself isn't what catches his attention, but the little head that's poking out of the water, because fishes don't swim this close to shore, and they certainly don't poke their heads out like they're trying to peek up at someone. At least, that's what Loki has read and observed about Earth fishes.

Maybe observing them in restaurants hadn't been the best thing to do to learn about them, though.

Your highness? the fish is saying, making popping and pooking sounds as it moves its gills and fins. Loki has to blink before he realizes he's being addressed, and as he cranes his head up a little, he sees that the fish looks disappointed to see him.

No surprise there.

But still, self-loathing aside, how curious.

Ah, the fish says, and then turns to swim away, probably thinking that Loki can't understand it. 

But he calls out, “Who did you expect?”

The fish stops for a moment, and then turns back to face him. It pokes its head out the water again. You understand me?

“Yes,” he says. He wants to stand to take a good look at the fish, but that might spook it away, so he doesn't.

But you're human, aren't you? The fish asks, also as equally intrigued as he is. How do you understand me?

“Why were you looking for a land-dweller when you belong to the sea?” he asks back.

The fish laughs, in the best way a fish can laugh. I wasn't looking for a land-dweller at all. His highness would be offended if he'd heard you call him that.

“His highness?” Loki asks. “A royal member of yours walks on land?”

Yes, says the fish, But he loves the sea like no other.

Loki lets himself latch onto this for a moment. It's something new, something odd and it's not something related to his problems right now, so he lets himself think about this. Someone akin to royalty for a fish, who isn't a land-dweller and would be angered at being called one, but walks on land.

“He doesn't happen to be a turtle, does he?”

The fish laughs again and dips down into the water to let out a stream of bubbles. You're funny, it says, and Loki gets the distinct impression that it's smiling at him, even with how limited its expressions are, being a fish and all.

“What's your name?” Loki asks. Then, “Do you even have one?”

Anshu, says the fish. 

The word bounces around Loki's head, for a minute simply sounding like two innocent syllables, but after a moment, the magic of All-Speak translates it to something he can understand. Ván.

Hope.

Of all things Loki is looking for right now, it's hope. The very thought makes him laugh for a moment, and the fish gives him an odd look.

“That's a lovely name,” he says, “My name is Loki.”

What brings you here, Sir Loki? the fish asks. You just appeared out of nowhere.

“I needed someplace to think,” Loki says. “This was the first place I could think of.”

Do you drop by here a lot?

“I've been by, once or twice. I just remembered it,” he says.

Ah. Anshu looks up at the cloudy sky like they see something more. It is beautiful isn't it?

“Yes,” Loki says, then, remembering something else, he says, “The last time I was here, I seem to recall some sort of animal spooking me and my companion. By any chance, was that - ”

His highness Eridan? Yeah, Anshu says with a bit of a snicker. He was protecting his territory.

“I...see,” Loki says, and looks around for a bit. He stands up, brushing the sand off his pants, and as he turns behind him he notices something tall poking out of the tree line. It looks like a lighthouse. Have there been humans here in the time he has been away? Progress sure is fast. “Where is he now?”

He went...somewhere, Anshu says. They sound sad. Longing. They miss this 'Eridan', Loki realizes. He went to find some friends, I think.

“And he hasn't been back yet?”

No, Anshu says, He'll take as long as he will take, but I believe he will be back. His highness has proven to be reliable.

“You trust him a lot?” Loki asks.

Anshu looks proud. With my life.

“That's a bold thing to claim, Anshu. A lot of people you trust with your life can easily let you down.”

He hasn't given me any reason to distrust him yet, Anshu says, And I don't think he will.

Loki studies the fish for a moment. They're a little angel fish. He doesn't know the lifespan of these things, but he's willing to bet this one is rather young, and they've already sworn their soul off to some ruler who's apparently left his people for a journey. Loki hopes whatever that journey, it would be worth it.

“I hope he never gives you a reason to distrust him then,” he says. He's not so cruel as to dash the hopes of one, naive little fish.

Thank you. I hope you find some peace with whatever's taking up your thoughts, the fish says, and it takes Loki back a little, hearing such kind wishes from a fish, of all things. 

Then Anshu dives down again and swims off, presumably back to their reef, leaving Loki on the shore.

He feels a little lighter than when he'd come here, both from the surprise, and the strange conversation. 

Hope.

He'd needed a reminder of that.

-

He spends the next few days just traveling around places, trying to clear his head and focus more, but he does occasionally pop in the Safehouse to see how everyone is doing. He knows it's awfully rude of him to just be flitting in and out but he can't really bring himself to face Rose and others yet.

Not yet.

But he will.

Sadly, on the day he decides that he'll come home, there's another storm pouring and so most of everyone in the War Council is stranded at the hospital, and the only person that he finds is the pool master, and they're sitting in the solarium with their forehead pressed against the glass as they watch the rain fall around about them.

They're not very close friends, Loki knows. The pool master is someone who had once upon a time been more than willing to take orders and not ask questions and Loki had capitalized on that. They had just been there, and willing to help as long as they were left out of the house pranks, and so Loki had recruited them. They weren't in the forefront of Safehouse matters either, so had anyone been compromised, they made for a perfect key for the emergency system. They had been...a tool, for lack of better word, and perhaps Loki should remedy seeing people as tools when he'd hated the thought of being one himself.

They hadn't talked a lot, and they probably couldn't even be called friends, although he's seen bursts of irritation from them that was rightfully warranted given that he constantly caught them or skywalked them and their best friend around at the most inconvenient of times. At least, if anything, they trusted him to not kill them on the spot for shooting him disdainful looks for dragging them around at the most inopportune times.

They turn to him as soon as they realize there's someone else in the room – which takes about five minutes – and when he gets a good look on their face, he sees that they've been crying.

“Angeles, what's wrong?” he asks, and feels stupid because a lot of things are wrong right now, like two of this kid's friends being stuck in a hospital and them having to go through something so traumatic firsthand.

The pool master – Saph, because that was their name and Loki should start remembering that, damn it – tries to speak, but only sucks in a shaky breath and then puts a hand over their mouth, trying to muffle whatever sob was going to come out.

Loki stands there, awkward, not knowing what to do.

He watches as they look down, trying to gather themself, and once they have, they fix their sleeves from where they've been slipping past their fingers, and the collar of their sweater from where it's bunched up. 

“I'm - “ They lick their dry, chapped lips, and even that small action seems to take too much effort. “I'm fine. I just – I'm confused, stressed, and overwhelmed and it's been a little too much lately.”

“Where's Ruben?”

“He's upstairs, he's asleep,” they say, waving a hand. “Didn't see the point in disturbing him, you know?”

“He's your best friend,” Loki says, “I’m sure he - ”

“He already takes care of me most of the time,” Saph says, insisting. “It's fine. I'm fine.” They force a tight smile. “What did you need?”

He doesn't need anything, really, he'd just been looking for anyone at all in the house. Anyone to talk to and maybe be on the receiving end of a yelling of.

“Have you been eating?” he asks.

The pool master runs a hand over their face, exasperated. “Yes, yes, I've been eating. Not a lot, but I'm trying. I've tried to sleep too. I am fine, Mr. Win – Loki. Didn't you come here for a specific reason?”

“I was looking for everyone,” he says, “But they're all at the hospital today.”

“Did you expect anyone to be home?”

“No,” he says.

They let out a dull laugh. “You've been running away from everything even when you tell yourself you're not, huh?”

He frowns. “I'm not.”

“Mm,” they say, “So you had no idea why you came here at all?”

“I had a vague concept of it.”

“That depended on whether or not you actually found someone you wanted to talk to, yeah,” they say.

He says nothing.

They turn to stare out at the rain again for a while, silent, tracing the raindrops as they slide down the glass with a finger, and mumbling a lullaby softly under their breath. 

Loki finds himself a seat across the room. He might as well get comfortable while he’s here. It’s not like roaming around the house is going to do him any good at this point.

“What were you crying about?” he asks. Again, stupid question.

Still, Saph answers. “Just general confusion, I guess,” they say, “Nothing makes sense these days.”

He can agree with that. He'd thought he had a fair grasp of what was happening and then, things like these happened, and while he knew he had ideas and theories, he was in too much turmoil to actually focus and assess his theories. 

“It's frustrating,” Saph continues, “And I kind of just want it to be all over already.”

Loki looks out of the glass walls, watching the rain along with them. He almost finds himself drifting to sleep before he notices that Saph is walking over and sinking into the chair opposite him, leaning back, tired, staring blankly at the desk between them.

“Something the matter?” he asks.

“If I messed up at something somehow really badly, would you kill me?”

He straightens a little at the sudden question. “Excuse me?”

“If I messed up at something somehow really badly,” Saph repeats, very carefully. They look up at him, and Loki meets their eyes. The dark circles under their eyes are more red than dark, and puffy from all their crying, but it doesn't soften their glare any less. He thinks for a second that they're acting strange, but then he corrects himself. He doesn't know them that well. He's never thought to pay attention and let himself know them well, so he can't ever know if they're acting strange, or if they've always been like this, and he's just noticed.

“No,” he says, “That's unfair.”

“Not even if my mistake costs a lot?”

“It would depend,” Loki says, “It's always a case by case basis – where's this coming from?”

The resolve in their eyes breaks a little, and they look like they're about to start crying again. They draw in another breath and reach into the pocket of their pajamas, trying to fish out something but fumbling badly with it as their hands are trembling. 

Outside, the rain continues to rage, and thunder rumbles. Loki thinks about Thor for a moment, trying to distract himself with even that because he doesn't think he really wants to know about what the pool master is sliding across the table.

It's the string of numbers that Cecil had written down, right before they'd brought him to the hospital. The blood on the paper has long since hardened and browned. It's been days, after all. Almost weeks, and they'd had to deal with so much, that they've forgotten about this.

Loki looks at the numbers first, and then the tiny boxes of grids at the very edges of the paper, evidence of trial and error.

“I'm sorry we couldn't teach you how to do it, but I tried to get something done to at least clear my head a little, you know. I wanted to be useful,” they say, “And I hate solving these things, but I can do it, just with a bit more time than it usually takes Ruben to do it.”

Loki studies the scribbles they’ve made, in some horridly colored ink, and at their handwriting that he's come to be familiar with, with all the errands he constantly has them do. 

He looks at how they solved it. At their grids, at the encircled letter G, and then as the deciphered message. He leans back in his seat too, and runs a hand over their face. 

He doesn't even have much horror to express anymore, he's just tired, and he's confused, and he doesn't know what to even think anymore.

Sapphrel is crying again.

“I-I-I...” They're trying to talk but their voice is breaking, and they look like they're close to hyperventilating. “I don't know what's going on.”

A few drops of tears hit the paper, and they push it further towards him quickly, reaching up again to wipe at their cheeks with their sleeves. 

Loki looks back down at the paper like it’s going to change what's written there. It doesn't.

“I tried, over and over, because maybe I had solved it wrong. Hell, I ran it through decoders just in case,” they say, laughing bitterly as they motioned towards the scrap of paper. “But somehow – I don't know, somehow, Cecil got this vision, so that has to be right, that has to be correct! That! That's – that's - ”

They fall back in their chair, sobbing fully, burying their face in their hands.

“Angeles,” Loki tries.

“No!”

“Saph, calm down,” Loki says. He knows that calming them down and reassuring them is the right course of action for now, so he tries. “You can't possibly believe what this says.”

He gets hysterical laughter in response. “Oh, I don't know – do you? Because if you believe it, then that basically means I'm fucked, isn't it?”

“We have no proof. I have been keeping track of everyone's movements as much as I can.”

“Well, somehow, I messed up in my goddamn sleep,” Saph says, smacking a hand on the desk, “Somehow, I made this happen, and I'm at fault - ”

“There's a possibility that this was written down by whatever was possessing Cecil.”

Saph stops.

Loki pinches the bridge of his nose. It's a half-assed theory, but it's the only one that makes sense and adds up right now. Because he really has been keeping track of everyone's movements. He's not as close to the pool master and their best friend as everyone else, but he has been keeping track as much as he can, and he knows the pool master has only been to school, to the Safehouse, to their awkward family reunion, and he knows that for an amount of time, they've been sick.

“It's possible that this isn't a vision at all, and that Cecil wrote this in a state of possession,” Loki says, “And that he was fighting it. Which explains why the full possession only happened in the hospital. That must have been when Cecil's control finally lapsed.”

“You're just pulling this out your ass.”

“You need to stop heaping the blame on yourself,” Loki says, reaching forward to poke them in the forehead, slightly irritated. 

“But Cecil's visions are never wrong!”

“This time, they are,” Loki says. “It's trying to divide us. You handle the emergency system. If it gets us, and then it gets our back-ups, we are done for. It's simple strategy. Do you understand?”

“I'm trying to,” they say. They still haven't stopped crying, and they're shaking now. “I'm trying to so bad, but.”

“It's not your fault. You have nothing to do with this,” Loki says, and tries to feed magic into his voice calm the hysterical human in front of him. 

Sapphrel hunches over, crying freely now.

On Loki's desk, there is the letter, and the decoded message says, in Sapphrel's handwriting, the same handwriting that Loki had seen on the margins of the missile guide all those months ago:

who's behind this who's the heir

itssapphrelitssapphrelitssapphrel

-

It’s raining again. 

It has been raining a lot in the city lately, and while Mai would rather stay in the Safehouse until the sky clears, there is something urgent that requires her presence here. It requires everyone’s, really, because nearly everyone in the network is here. They haven’t heard anything from the Safehouse radios yet, so they’re assuming everyone there is busy, as they’ve sent a message for a yellow radio, and there’s no broadcast yet.

Still, that doesn’t mean they won’t extend their hands to help those who need help. And besides, they’re not all helpless on their own.

“Is she okay?” she hears her brother ask as they all stare at the girl huddled beneath a stolen blanket. Or, she looks like a girl, but not really. She kind of reminds Mai of that odd boy she’d met by the river once. They’re both rude, and they both have horns, but this girl has odd eyes, and her horns are longer.

The girl, as if hearing what they’re talking about, scoffs, “Of course I’m fine.”

Mai shrugs. “She says she is.”

“Don’t talk down at me, you – ” The girl sniffs the air. “You’re all humans here, aren’t you?”

There’s a few curious whispers, and Mai hears someone start to answer, but there’s a shout from beyond the bridge, and everyone turns to see five kids sliding down the slope, drenched in the rain, all trying to carry a body between them. It’s another person, older than most of them, by the looks of it, and they look unconscious. They have the same grey skin as the girl huddled with everyone else, but strangely enough, from the numerous gashes she has on her limbs, probably from falling down from someplace very high, she seems to be bleeding – 

Teal?

“We got another one!” one of the kids dragging the unconscious stranger yells. A few people step aside so they can pass, and as they do, they break the crowd around the girl with the blanket, so she sees the approaching cavalry.

She draws in a sharp breath and stills, murmuring a name under her breath.

Mai frowns, thinking. First, that grey-skinned boy from a while back, and then a few days ago, this odd-eyed girl, and now, this new teal-bleeding stranger. 

Where were they all from? Had they escaped the men in the suits?

As the children carefully place the new stranger on the ground, the girl with the blanket rushes over to her, checking the stranger’s face, and their superficial wounds, and though she looks livid, she looks almost…worried.

Mai turns to the kids who had dragged this person here, all of them shaking the rain out of their clothes. “They were the only one you found?”

“Yeah,” one of them, a girl – Kristina, Mai thinks – says. “They were by the woods. I think they fell from the trees.”

“Or somehow, past the trees, by the looks of it,” another person says. “Look at all those cuts.”

They all turn to the stranger again, and this time, the odd-eyed girl is definitely fussing over them, tearing her blanket into strips to use them as makeshift bandages.

“No word from the Safehouse?” Lester, Mai’s brother, says from beside her.

“No,” she says, “At least, not yet. Do you think they’re okay?”

“I think someone needs to check, but.” He spreads his hands. “We’re kids.”

“That’s never stopped any of us before,” she says. She draws in a breath as she makes up her mind and calls everyone to attention, trying to remember how Mr. Winters had always looked and spoke whenever he was leading the Safehouse crew around. 

She steps away from the crowd and raises her voice, and everyone turns to her when they hear her speak, waiting for her verdict.

She looks at the strangers in their midst again, although the conscious girl doesn’t seem to pay Mai any attention. That’s fine. She curls her hand into a fist as she gives out the command.

“We need to get the Mayo Man.”