The Magic of Two Minds: Part Twelve (Loki/Elsa)

It was not the glittering tower of ice on the North Mountain, but it hardly mattered. Loki stood before the palace, savoring the sight. Years of searching had finally yielded success. He had arrived.

Getting inside was trickier, but in the end the guards were distracted enough by a replica that Loki snuck past the walls and into a back corridor. Following the path he had memorized from his illusions, Loki found the queen's chambers easily enough. He was surprised to find another guard. Elsa never had such security before, from what he had seen.

“The queen is in no condition for strange visitors,” the guard said.

“She will see me,” Loki said. He was not entirely sure whether to employ charm, threats, or bribery here. He smiled. “I've not come to steal her away—yet. I promise to put her back just as I found her.”

The guard remained suspicious. “And what is your business with the queen?”

“Not 'business' at all.” And certainly none of yours. “I am an old friend of her grace.”

The soldier scoffed. “An old friend indeed. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

Loki felt apprehensive for the first time since he set foot in Arendelle. How many years has it been? he wondered. “None at all,” he said. “I am pleased to know that her grace is in such safe hands. An old friend of the family, then, here to pay respects to a great lady, if it please your mightiness.”

Either the guard took Loki for an idiot himself, or just a bloodless threat, but eventually he relented and allowed the demigod into the chambers. There, Loki found a parlor as hushed as a chapel, and although the temperature was mild, the atmosphere was stifling.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said a pretty young woman in a nurse's uniform as she approached him. “Are you here to see her majesty?”

No, I must have gotten lost on the way to the stables, he wanted to say. Instead, he just said, “I am.”

She wanted to argue with him too, but it was shorter than his conversation with the guard. Still, it seemed an eternity before he was finally led to the queen's bedroom. There was a fire going, making this room even stuffier than those preceding it. Why is it so warm in here? Loki wondered. Elsa hates the heat.

He forgot the warmth at the sight of the queen's enormous canopied bed, the hangings drawn back, and what it contained. Beneath a pile of blankets lay a tiny figure. Out of it poked a pale, wrinkled face he did not recognize. The hair that spilled across the pillow was silvery grey. The eyes were closed.

This is not Queen Elsa.

The nurse was at the bedside before he thought to stop her. “Your highness?” she said softly. “You have a visitor.”

Tamping down his revulsion, Loki drew closer. He wanted to tell the nurse that there was a mistake, that this was not the queen he meant. This was an old, weak woman, hours from death by the look of her. It must have been some relative who had come and seized the throne. Perhaps she was here for a visit, and Elsa had given up her room. He would find the true queen in the library, or on horseback in the forest, or visiting another country altogether. Anywhere but in that bed, in this suffocating room with its roaring fireplace.

The nurse touched the spotted, veiny hand upon the quilt. Loki was about to turn and leave when the old woman opened her eyes.

The sight was a jolt that almost made him retch. Even red-rimmed and sunken into the withered face, there was little mistaking the shade of ice-blue. Time had not ravaged that, at least. He did not have a moment to marvel over the sharpness of those eyes—the way they widened told him that he was seen and recognized.

Damn it all, how many years has it really been?

“Loki.” The whisper was more like a croak. “Is it really you?”

He inched closer. “At the moment, I have my doubts,” he said.

“I will be just outside,” the nurse said. On her way out, she gestured toward a single empty chair that stood by the bedside. Loki approached it, but did not sit down.

“Have I the honor of addressing Elsa of Arendelle, the great Winter Queen?” he asked.

“I suppose I've changed a little since you saw me last.” She blinked. Loki wondered if those were tears in her eyes, or they were just rheumy with age. “I'm glad you came to visit me at last. You look exactly as I remember.”

“Elsa…” Loki finally sank into the chair. “How long—?”

“Ages and ages,” she said. “Fifty years, at least, since I returned from Asgard—to much confusion, I might add. Sometimes I pretended I was an angel cast from heaven, but that made Anna too sad, so I turned it into a story for her children.”

“What of your children?” he asked, trying to keep his face and tone neutral.

Elsa saw through it, and smiled. “None that I know of,” she said.

“Fifty years,” Loki murmured. It had not felt a fraction so long in Asgard. “I would have been here sooner,” Loki said. “I only just found another way. I hope your grace will forgive my tardiness.”

Now he was sure they were tears. “All this time, you've been looking for me?”

“Yes.” It was no time to be evasive or glib. “I did what I had to.”

“But you didn't have to.”

“Of course I did. I could not let that be the last of it. I hated my father that night. Not a word could sway Heimdall once he had his orders. Even my foolhardy brother would not go against him. My mother helped me for a time, but…even she gave up hope, and I daresay thought me a fool.”

“You were a fool,” Elsa said, smiling again. “I'm glad. If it let me see you this last time.”

“Now who is the fool?” Loki asked. “This is no last time.”

“It well may be,” the queen said. “I am dying, Loki. My pretty nurses and maids and nieces and nephews don't say so where I can hear them, but I know when I've lived out my years.”

Loki wanted to suggest bringing her to Asgard again and plying her with potions and fruits to extend her years and attempt to restore her youth. It was unlikely she would survive any leg of the journey. Even if he left and brought something back, it might be too late.

“There is nothing left to be done,” Elsa said, as though she could read his thoughts. “Even my dying wish has been granted, now.”

“Where is your king?” he asked. “Does he still live?”

“There is no king—there never was.”

Why was he so relieved? It hardly mattered now.

“I did know a mysterious prince from another world once,” Elsa added. “For a while, I wondered if he had been merely a fairy tale. But Anna never let me forget he was real. He made a good story for the children, too.”

Loki could not bear to listen to her talk this way anymore. “Can you get out of bed?” he asked. “Perhaps Heimdall will open the Bifrost once he sees I am already on the other side. I am sure I could carry you to the site. I have not read all the books in the palace library, but surely something there may be useful for…a situation such as this. And there is an orchard in Asgard with golden apples that—”

“Loki, I told you, there's nothing to be done.”

“This is unjust,” Loki said, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I will never forgive my father.”

“You will,” Elsa said. “You must.”

“For what reason?”

“Because he's your father…he wants the best for you…and it will not be the last time he offends you, if you Asgardians live as long as you say. So you might as well practice forgiveness now.”

“How can you say such a thing after what he's done to you—to us?” Loki asked.

Her smile was sad, and her voice weaker. “You forget—I know a little about being confined, kept away from the ones I love, by a father who loved me and thought he was doing right. It was all right, in the end. What would I get out of still hating him for it?”

Loki clenched his jaw. Odin had not done what he thought was right; Loki could not accept the idea that he had. Odin simply could not admit that his younger, lesser son had managed to trick him for a brief time, and had dared to cultivate interests and relationships outside of the king's sanction. Loki could not say these things aloud, he knew. Elsa would try to argue with him.

“Nevertheless, I will have my revenge,” Loki said. When Elsa's blue eyes went wide with alarm, he chuckled. “Fear not, my darling queen. It will not be violent. I will merely do whatever is in my power—the power I have now, and that which I have yet to attain—to reclaim what he stole from us.” He leaned closer and whispered to her, “Our time…and your life.”

She was still staring at him with horror. “Is it possible?”

“If it is, I shall find out.”

“Loki, no,” she rasped. “Please don't do this.”

He frowned. “Would you kneel before death? Would you not take more time if it were offered to you?”

“It's the way things are,” Elsa said. “What they should be. It's time—it's my time. I've lived, it's over, there's nothing left. Just remember what time we did have, and say goodbye.”

“I cannot,” he said. “Not without trying something.”

“You have to.”

“Do not tell me what I must do!”

“I am still a queen,” Elsa said, her quavering tone still clutching at the remains of power. “I will tell you what to do if I wish.”

“I will not obey you.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. The sound filled him with alarm, fearful that this breath was her last, but she opened her eyes again.

“I'm a dimwit if I thought you would,” she said. “My vanity is pleased to know you'll miss me once I've gone, but you have to leave it at that. Don't try to bring me back, or try to reclaim the years. Whatever you think to try—whatever dark magic you think could give us more time—is not worth it.”

Loki reached out to touch a strand of gray hair on her pillow. It was thin and brittle compared to the soft, heavy, white-blonde braid he remembered, and he pulled his hand back. His clenched fist rested on the edge of the bed.

“Is your life worth so little to you?” he asked.

“I've lived my life,” she said. “I'm sorry you weren't there. I wish you had been. But we can't change that.” She reached out a tiny, wrinkled hand and placed it over Loki's fist. He felt the magic in her—weaker than he recalled, but stronger than he expected for someone so close to death.

“Loki, listen to me,” she said. “I've lived a life of power—political and magical. There were advantages, but it is a burden that I would not wish on anyone. It pained me to name my nephew as heir, knowing how heavy that crown is. Power can change you in so many terrible ways, and if you need power to bring me back, whatever kind, I beg of you not to chase it. If you will not refrain for my sake, then do it for your own good. Please, Loki, let it go—and let me go.”

Loki felt his heart soften at her enfeebled pleas and the unsettling anxiety in her expression. Elsa had not lied to him before. Surely there was something to what she said. But if there was a way to undo what his father had done…

“Promise me,” she whispered.

His face was almost pitying. “What makes you think I would keep it?”

“You keep your promises. You said you could bring me to Asgard, and you did. You swore I'd see you again, and here you are.”

“They were easily kept,” he said. “I was determined. I wanted to keep them.”

“But now?”

“Now…now there is too much at stake.”

He felt almost guilty at her defeated expression. “Then lie,” Elsa said. “I know you can do that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you won't give me a promise, then give me a lie—one final, beautiful lie for an old woman.”

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of her request. It was the last thing he would have expected her to ask of him. She had always demanded the truth from him, even in the beginning.

I meant what I said…When?…Whichever pleases you.

Did you really want to rescue me?…I would have rescued you three years ago.

Loki shifted in his seat before he leaned forward. His lips almost brushed her ear as he spoke.

“I, Loki of Asgard, here and now make my final farewell to Queen Elsa of Arendelle, at her request. This will be the last we see of each other. I shall heed her wishes and be content with the brief, infrequent time we spent together. I shall no longer try to defy the wishes of my father the king, or resist the precepts of the cosmos. Instead, I shall return to Asgard thoroughly meek and chastened. I will not seek out power over life and death and time, and if I should inadvertently encounter it, I will bow my head and turn away and say that such influence is not for me to possess.”

He hesitated for half a second before he planted a soft kiss on her cheek—thin and dry, like old parchment. When he leaned back in the chair again, Elsa gave him a wry smile. He saw even more of the young woman he loved in the elderly face.

“Lovely,” Elsa said. “For a moment, I almost believed you.”

She closed her eyes, exhausted by all the entreaties she made to her unexpected visitor, and was aged again. Loki watched the lined features of her face relax, and saw the shallow rise and fall of her chest beneath the blankets. He felt stifled by the room, but could not bring himself to leave. When the nurse came back again, however, he made his escape.

Loki proved himself a liar the next day, when he returned to the palace and the stifling bedroom. To his horror, the queen's condition had deteriorated rapidly; she barely recognized him. The servants and nurses were less shocked, and he knew he had been fortunate to find her on a good day. He waited, but another was not forthcoming.

He had not been in Arendelle for a week when he found himself standing behind a throng of citizens gathered to honor their beloved queen. When the sun began its descent behind the mountains, the villagers began to trickle away from the cemetery. Loki remained, staring at the elaborate headstone placed beside the memorial to Arendelle's last king, lost at sea many years ago.

He sensed another person standing near him. When he felt a hand brush against his, he finally turned to look. Beside him stood a small old woman, her red hair streaked with grey, looking up at him with a pair of earnest, familiar-looking blue eyes.

“I told her you loved her,” the woman said. “I'm glad you came—she was waiting for you.”

Loki stared at her in silence for some time, but she seemed in no hurry. He slowly reached into his coat and drew out a length of silvery fabric.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “She left this in Asgard.”

She took it with a trembling hand. “Thank you,” she said, drawing the cloak around her shoulders. It was far too long for her, stooped with age as she was.

“She loved you more than anyone,” Loki said.

Her smile was melancholy. “I know.” She stroked the cloth as though it were a newborn kitten. “It still smells like her. How is that possible?”

He looked away, back toward the headstone, and found himself smirking.

“Magic,” he said.