Valediction [Fólkvangr End, Book 3][Loki Fanfiction]

Chapter Seven - Leviathan

Author's Note: Just a quick one! I've been writing AUs about Val and Loki and I posted the first one on the blog I have set up for the series, at folkvangr-end.tumblr.com. I'll probably post them on here as a collection at some point, but if you want to read the first one, head on over there! As always, thank you dears for being patient, and get ready, because the next chapter, our ship is being reunited at last!

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Truth also is the pursuit of it:

Like happiness, and it will not stand.

Even the verse begins to eat away

In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;

A wind moves a little,

Moving in a circle, very cold.

How shall we say?

In ordinary discourse—

We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,

The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable

Is the 'preponderance of objects.' The sky lights

Daily with that predominance

And we have become the present.

We must talk now. Fear

Is fear. But we abandon one another.

  —George Oppen

I can feel the blood trickling out of my nose before I even hit the mat. I groan, curling up into a ball.

"Fucking hell," I groan, rolling onto my side. 

"Come on, Valkyrie, get up!" I hear Natasha yelling from the side of the mats. "You can fight better than that, I know you can."

"I'm not so sure," I argue. "I was never really a good fighter. Messy, reckless. I was only so strong because I was Jötunn, Nat. And now, well...I don't even have that."

"I believe in you," Wanda Maximoff says as she appears over me. She offers me a hand and I take it and she helps me to my feet. Something about her firm Transian accent makes me want to believe her. Steve comes over and holds me by the shoulders before tilting my head back to inspect my nose.

Steve claps me on the back. Hard. "It doesn't look broken."

"Gee, thanks," I mutter as I pinch the bridge of my nose and tilt my head forward. Steve walks off and I roll my eyes. He's been strange in the past few days. But then again, I haven't been myself either. The "quick extraction" to get Loki and Jane from the Greek authorities has been taking longer than I anticipated.

"I wouldn't take it to heart, if I were you," Sam Wilson says as he throws an arm around my shoulders and we walk off the mat together. "Cap's just a little focused on other things right now."

"Aren't we all?" I laugh. Sam smiles at me and he, Wanda and I head off. I'm still only just getting to know them, but I like them a lot. Steve and Natasha have been trying to train me right alongside the new Avengers crew. Wanda, Sam, James Rhodes (a colleague of Stark's, evidently) and my personal favorite, Vision. It's sort of weird to call someone Vision. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Though, again, Vision also isn't a someone.