#but this isn’t a lesson you learn on the first watch thru. nor the second and maybe not even the third.

[yellowsubiesdance]

watched all of fleabag again, this time with me mum

[ragnarokkvaa]

Chaos Rising - A Loki x Wanda fanfic

The young Midgardian witchling upon his door brings with unbridled surprise within Loki; tempered quickly. It is but a brief play across his visage. How she found him when he’d thought he’d covered his tracks well was …beyond him. She stands before him, sleeves of her black sweatshirt balled into her fists; backpack hanging from her left shoulder frayed.

Loki watches wordlessly as she shifts her weight; the weathered wood underfoot creaking slightly with the shift of weight; her auburn hair hanging free down her back and over her shoulders, drifting across her face with the soft whispering of the chilling Norwegian wind.

It carries with the slightly salty tang of the sea, the sharp scent of evergreens and the soft floral scent of her perfume.

“Loki.” She says his name again and it breaks him from the spell of revere he’d been under.

“How did you find me?” Though there’d been some suspicion that the people of the small fishing village a few miles of the wilderness he claimed as home might be aware of who he was, if there was truth they did not dare speak it.

He’d done a fairly good job of hiding post-blip when he escaped Thanos’ destruction of their vessel …and during the blip and post-everyone’s return. Though the magic that hung in the air even now was sharp and metallic and somehow sweet like burnt sugar leaves a bad aftertaste in his mouth, Loki had deigned not to come out of hiding.

There was a peacefulness to Norway — he can see it now — why this was the place Odin came to die once free of his spell. There was old magic saturating the earth here that called to him, the lingering of devotion that he’d once sought so desperately and greedily; that soothed his wildest impulses like the lullabies Frigga had lulled him to sleep with as a small, fussy infant.

He watches as the Sorceress — for he can sense that she has come into her own — bites her bottom lip; marred by worrying it as she does now. “Your magic.” She admits, blinking her wide eyes at him; doe-like. Soft. As beautiful and wild as the seas of Norway.

That Loki notices this is slightly jarring; but what is even more jarring to him is that her explanation makes perfect sense to him. She is the master of chaotic magic — he can almost taste it; as sweet and tempting to him as spun candy floss. Her magic speaks to his own; a soulsong that he cannot begin to understand.

She is quiet for a few moments more, seeming desperate to look at anything but him. “Can I come in?” She asks then, when it is apparent that he cannot fathom the why.

“Of course.” Loki replies softly, stepping aside so his lean, tall frame was no longer blocking the rune carved doorway to his home.

That is how Wanda Maximoff came to stay with him; denying his offer to take her to New Asgard with the firmly rooted belief that Thor and Brunnhilde would take her in. Whether it was a lack of trust in herself or not Loki cannot be sure but finds himself caring less and less as Wanda’s presence begins to, as the weeks swell into months, bring comfort.

They take it slow: she does not ask how he is still alive and he does not ask what has caused the grief that haunts her gaze, that causes her mind to wander in what he believes mortals call ‘thousand yard stare’ when they sit before the fire. This unspoken agreement is comfortable despite that it leaves Loki maddeningly curious.

Imagine, he thinks one day as he neatly skins a large fish one of the villager’s sons had brought in exchange for a small talisman carved from the branch of an ash tree — a pale imitation of Sleipnir whom has been glamoured so that his extra four legs are unseen; him being curious about a Midgardian.

As unlikely as he’d always thought he would find it: it was nevertheless true. Especially when he caught her humming soft and foreign lullabies to herself; that he assumes as her comfort ‘round him grew became full-fledged lullabies sung in Sokovian as she cooked paprikash from ingredients they bought at the village market.

“That’s a lovely song.” Loki remarks as they stand side-by-side at the cabin’s kitchen counter: him slicing up chicken as she tends to the egg noodles boiling in a pot on the gas stove.

Wanda is so quiet for a moment that Loki cannot help but think he’s overstepped. “My mother used to sing it to me when I was a child.” She tells him after a long moment of silence filled with the splice of knife thru meat and the soft sound of bubbling water. “And I sang it for my boys.”

Surprise draws Loki’s eyebrows up — he had not known she had children. He suspects, quick as he is, that something happened to them as they had not been with her when she’d first appeared on his doorstep …nor had they appeared at all; and she speaks with grief, the lulling lilt of her voice carrying her Sokovian accent — which he’s learned came out when she spoke of her family, of her home. Which, was rare. Or when she was angry with him; which was not all that rare at all.

It happened on occasion. Typically, when they were training and Loki pushed her too far, or when she’d get riled about the fact that he had yet to tell Thor he was still alive — and had been the whole time.

“Where are they? Your sons?” Loki asks hesitantly, watching her hands carefully as she pauses stirring the noodles. A muscle in her jaw jumps and she gives a sharp tilt of her head; which is usually a good indication that Loki’d crossed that invisible boundary line.

“They’re gone. They were …” Wanda struggles, her voice thick with emotion and her accent brought to the surface with her grief. “…never real.” Loki looks away the second he sees a tear slide down her cheek; leaving a glistening trail of her sorrow. It feels private; that moment. Like he was glimpsing at something he had no business seeing.

“I’m …sorry.” He offers, unsure what else to say and hating that it seems so feeble. He quietly scoops the sliced chicken between his hand and the flat edge of the knife and drops it in a frying pan, focusing on the sizzle as he turns and washes his hands.

He dries them hastily off on the kitchen towel and feels his breath leave his lips in a soft rush as he turns to see her standing, wooden spoon immobile in her left hand; her right hand balled up in the sleeve of her shirt, pressed against her mouth as pained sobs wracked her body.

“Wanda?” Loki was no stranger to grief — far from it; and he liked to credit himself as being better with emotions than Thor but finds himself reaching out to her; placing his hand on her upper arm. He doesn’t try to tell her that it would be alright …because would it? He couldn’t say; and Loki was never a fan of false platitudes.

He could feel her magic; seething within her. Connected to her emotions as it was and with her little bit of training its still reactive. Working to protect her as if it were her armor — as Frigga had once described magic to Loki as a small child.

His own magic works to subdue her’s, keeping it from lashing out in her grief.

Wanda was getting better — stronger — but she still had a ways to go before she mastered it. She was a fast learner, which Loki was grateful for, but he lacked his mother’s finesse with lessons, and if he was being honest her saintly patience.

Even so, he was grateful that they discovered their magic did not reject each other like opposing magnets …which Loki suspected was because their magic was both borne of chaos. That strange soulsong that only their magic could recognize; complimentary …and if combined? Loki shuddered to think of it.

The God of mischief feels his muscles pull taunt as he tenses the second Wanda steps closer to him and presses her face against his chest, the spoon clattering to the floor as she clings to him. Loki isn’t sure what makes him draw in a deep breath and press a kiss to the top of her head as he held her. Soft.

The instinctual urge to push her away was strong; Loki’s natural defense to any time he started to let himself be emotionally vulnerable in any degree with anyone …but —

this time, with her: he resists.