To Burn and To Glory (Loki)

[aa_valkyrie]

Deep in the center of Stuttgart, Germany's old town, the buildings stand packed close together as the peasants in a Flemish painting. It presents a scene from history with its stone lined streets and stacked floors with small windows, their wooden roofs perched high and close together. During the day, the narrow streets are a pedestrian haven for tourists roving the idyllic pubs and shops. However, it presents a hellish situation for a fire that rages out of control. It has swept up the floors of one of the shops, coursing through residential homes above and threatening the buildings near.

Aide was delayed this night. Those narrow streets cutting down on the ability of firefighters to get water to the scene and dampen its rage. One man, in the right place at the right time, made the difference. First to the scene and unfortunately, the only one not to leave -- going into the building again and again taking its toll. Now, families stand around the building crying, attended by medical aide, and the fire has been contained. The fireman lies beneath the fallen roof unable to be saved by his colleagues at the scene. Smoke rises from the shattered home.

The mood around the scene is sober. Unnoticed, through the smoke, exits a figure cloaked in cinder and and ash. Valkyrie is draped in her cloak and armor; her sword hangs at her back, sharp as the closed expression on her features. The hero has been taken. Her duty is done. All that is left is to exit into the night, unknown.


The entire place smells of smoke. People form clusters and groups, they are on their cellphones or holding them up to film the scene. Police and fireman and ambulances block out the road and civilians are herded backwards. There is a lot to see, even as the event lapses into its late stages, as bystanders begin to depart. An ambulance pulls away with a burst of siren.

Largely unnoticed in part due to his inoffensive demeanor but mostly from whatever strange magic is being employed to shield himself from grabbing attention, there's a tall, lanky figure moving through the motley crowd at a lazy, feline pace, no one interrupting him or directing him away. He wears black wool in a long coat over conservative clothing, a thin scarf of white and green wool flipping its end from a gust of a breeze, and his hands are in his pockets. His shoes are polished to a high sheen and are almost soundless against the old-world roads and curb. Someone sweeps the crowd with their camera phone, and feels mysteriously, thoughtlessly compelled to change course before he can clip into frame.

But Valkyrie is of a different make, and will notice when Loki's attention has fixed avid on her. His change of course to bring their paths together is only a subtle turn.

It is a subtle magic, to not be invisible but simply unnoticed as if a voice whispers in the ear to look away. There is nothing there to see. Valkyrie employs it by Odin's hand as Loki does by his own. The Valkyrie and the Asgardian Prince could look no more different had they been dressed to be opposing character for a play. Cinders cling to her skin, tips of her long blonde braid blackened ash, and the metal of her armor tarnished.

Valkyrie does not notice Loki at first, no matter how sharply his attention has fixed upon her, her attention wandering. When she does, there is ice and steel in her blue eyed gaze. The line of her jaw sets firm and sharp enough to match her blade. "Seek not mischief tonight, Son of Asgard," she warns softly. Hai Loki. How is it going?

"Seek not battle with me, Valkyrie, and I shall afford you no mischief," Loki proposes, the two beings coming together to create a negative space of interest from the mortals that drift by. That he looks very human tonight, for the purposes of moving with anonymous ease, is counterbalanced by the subtle indications that he is not -- no imperfections for someone who has brushed as close as messy death as he has, a vivid quality to his presence that one can only possess after their long lives.

He looks passed her, towards the blackened building, crawling his attention up to its upper reaches, then back to her. "I spy no battle, only the mistakes of mortal men -- what brings you?"

That he looks so human only heightens the sharp divide between the two of them. A bitter wind blows through the street, dusting ash from Valkyrie's skin to blow towards Loki. It caries lightly as easily as a moth alighting the air. "I seek no battle tonight, Little Prince."

A stark smile grants an edge to her features, lacking in humor beyond death's own. "Many a battle is the mistake of mortal men. That is where their heroes are found, not those who hunt glory but those who rise to it. I carried a hero this night."

Ash finds a place to cling to black wool, turned to fine grey streaks when Loki absently brushes down his sleeve. Things like Son of Asgard and Little Prince go by without objection, expected and unchecked, but the latter does get a narrowing of his eyes that is almost like a smile.

"You would be the expert of human heroics," he concedes, somehow without particular generousity for her expertise or the concept of human heroics. "I can only imagine their glories would be small to better conform to shape of their small lives. Whither will you go now?"

His titles are appropriate in pronouncement, if not meant with all the respect that one might consider Loki due. A fallen son of Odin is still a son of Odin. Valkyrie's smile edges sharper at the corners, catching the narrowing of Loki's eyes.

"While you would know nothing of their kind," Valkyrie opines in turn, canting her chin with what might be respect. Her words leave judgement of whether he knows nothing of /humans/ or simply /honor/ aside. "A glory is glorious, Little Prince. It matters not the length of the life, simply the depth of it." She pauses. "I walk, I think. What of you? Is the camera's eye dulled on you tonight?"

"That it is. Allow me to accompany you," is so genteel as to probably be mocking -- among every woman on this road tonight, Valkryie, in her ash-stained armoured glory, is the one least likely to require the accompaniment of a man who stands about an inch shorter than her, in his soft Midgardian fabrics and shiny shoes. That, and Loki is no such gentleman, no such acquaintance, the enemy of her current set of companions.

But perhaps she'll indulge him anyway, as he gestures with a hand to indicate the rest of the Stuttgart evening. "I would hear more of your words on glory. What it takes to truly earn the Valkyrie's embrace. Once, I thought I knew, and you must remain so certain."

"Am I to lack in your grand proclamations, then?" Valkyrie inclines her chin in a sharp nod, waving her hand in a gesture that -- for someone more trusted -- might become an offer of her arm. For Loki it is not. "As you will." It is an indulgence of a sort, easy to give; it means little.

They begin their walk away from the rumble and dirt, boots echoing in an unnoticeable hammer on the stone. The passerby do not mark their odd pairing any more than they note the shadows on the ground. She guides their path towards the river. "The simplest might tell you that such a path is displayed in their deeds, Little Prince. What think you that deems them so?"

There's a last glance from Loki, his attention briefly caught on where a body bag is being wheeled and loaded into a vehicle, before he dismisses the scene entirely as something finished, his hands finding his coat pockets again. Loki is content to follow her at her side.

"I imagine I am to be sending many dead heroes to your arms, Valkyrie," he says, sharply glib, watching the path ahead of them. "Call my curiousity an exercise in vanity."

The trace of her gaze on that body bag is silent. Her mouth pulled tight for a moment in a frown. "Hrm." Valkyrie sounds wholly unimpressed by his vanity, dismissal soft enough to not even take the form of words. "You seem to imagine many things. You would paint yourself an ambassador and a villain with the same brush so tirelessly."

But, if she must. "There is a resilience of the soul."

"Nay, Valkyrie -- I am only as I appear."

But he considers this a little.

"But I have, in the past, been commended for my imagination."

Wry. Loki smooths his scarf back within the folds of his coat. "A resilience," he repeats, musing without cynicism. He seems to take her word as important rather than something to mock, at least for now. He watches her profile as they walk, as irritatingly curious as he can be on occasion.

The aged Valkyrie shows no such irritation on her features, only age and time in the corners of her eyes. There is a quiet, immutable sadness that lingers in the creases of age. Mild as her blood leaves them on her skin. "You are a trickster in bone and blood, Loki." Her mouth breaks in the brittle crack of a smile, finding some humor in that. "You are never just as you seem."

"Indeed."

That first part gets only a crooked and thin smile, some comment or maybe even a laugh stifled and kept closed behind set teeth. People who match more normal their surroundings drift by, defer them space to walk without really seeing them at all. Emergency vehicles finally pulling away from the sight hurtle on by, and Loki's glance after them somewhat instinctual, paying heed to his surroundings.

"And is resilience and worthiness of deeds only reflected in one's prowess as a warrior? Whether the enemy be an army or devouring flame, permitting them to die as they lived."

"I once would have said yes...but, there is honor and valor in dead yet unexpected. Warriors most commonly bear the strongest of hearts that we will need to usher us through Ragnarok," Valkyrie offers after a moment's silence. It is perhaps one of respect. She watches as the Emergency vehicles pull away, gaze striking upon her companion as well with its sweep.

"The Valkyrie do not take sides in the culling of their dead. An evil heart though, it is of no good use. Such things bubble up from the core and stagnate everything they touch, polluting what might once have been the burden of noble purpose." The hands at her sides curl into fists. "Each of my sisters has her own way to carry her burden."

Loki walks along in silence for a moment, a considering sort of quiet, taking her words and turning them over in inspection.

"I envy not your task." There is a sharpness in tone that doesn't actually make that particularly reverent -- not quite deliberate. It's just there. "I've seen much cruelty at the hands of men with good hearts, out of their idleness, or their blindness, or simply a lapse of wisdom and reason. Good men who have fallen on battlefields in the name of evil men. Sorting the heroes from the rest requires a certainty I do not possess or believe truly exists. I have only seen true, corrupting evil once -- and it was in a corner of the galaxy even your sisters would not travel."

"If it were easy then the honor that comes with it would mean little. There is glory in war, in survival, in death -- in death is where a Valkyrie's purpose weighs most." Her gaze settles out on the sky, looking not to him with features carved in marble. It is so slowly eroded by time. "It is not a task for you to envy nor do I care any for your disbelief. Your shoulders could not bear it, little Prince."

"You do not understand, because you cannot see it. You will never know the look of a soul shining brightest just before it falls silent," she says, words resonant with an age not often shown. There is no doubt. Her blue eyes dance for just a moment, sparkling with ferocity like the suckered crack of ozone that comes with the foretelling of storm. "Have not traveled yet," she corrects. "That time too will come."

"Perhaps not, no. But I know of other things."

The Neckar river emerges into view, with the reflective stillness of all major rivers. Loki stops following Valkyrie so strictly, enough to veer instead to railing. "Resilience will be required," he says, of her final assertion, not looking at her so much as his own hand on the cool metal. "Your mockery is very sweetly delivered, by the way, or do the Valkyrie consider me Odinson still?"

"Would you like me to call you else?" It is an honest question, no discernible sarcasm or pity in Valkyrie's frank tone. "You may be a criminal to the crown or the wearer of the crown itself, Loki Odison et Laufferson. That is Asgardian business. But, you were raised a Prince and still a Prince you stand, history is not so easily stripped."

Loki's jaw sets but his expression and his manner is, as ever, difficult to read, even for wise old Valkyries. Maybe he disagrees. Maybe he desired some sort of affirmation in all her distant objectivity. More likely, he does not know which he prefers. His name spoken gains tension, but little else. His thoughts on history's changeability left, as well, unsaid.

"My query is not protest. I've been given worser monikers." He glances back at her, smile back in place. "Criminals and crowns have been known to coexist."

Loki's silence or lack of agreement bothers Valkyrie no more than his earlier displeasures. The broad warrior slides a hand along the rail lining the river, leaving a trail of ash behind her sweep. "That they have."

"If you have no more curiosity to sate, Little Prince. I will take my leave of you. There are many miles more to walk this night."

"That will never be so, Valkyrie, but a single night would not suffice," Loki says in dismissal, moving to find a lean against the railing, staking his claim of territory so that she is free to go. "Until we next meet. May it be so amicable." There is a light in his eyes that says his anticipation does not rest solely on whether or not they meet in peace.

"I have often head such." Man and god alike. There is a snort that catches in Valkyrie's throat at the suggestion of hope that their next meeting will be so amiable. Her frozen blue eyes holds his gaze, chill settled bone deep within in them. Then she smiles, in a way that does nothing to brighten her features, and inclines her chin in a nod that is a shade short of proper respect. "Until our next." She turns towards the west, disappearing along the river after a time.