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The Dragon and the Trickster by Katie Macpherson
 A song of Ice and Fire & Thor Xover Rated: T, English, Fantasy & Romance, Daenerys T./Dany, Loki, Words: 62k+, Favs: 578, Follows: 720, Published: Jul 28 Updated: 15m ago 180Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Daenerys
From the moment Daenerys agreed to go on this mad adventure, she knew she was going to hate this process.
When he had told her that they would be traveling by means of something called world walking, she was certain that she would have to be out of her mind to go with him.
It was one thing to admit that magic was real and that there were people who could use it to great effect in order to topple cities or claim sea dragons.
It was quite another to be able to use that magic to step out of the world that one knew and into another that was entirely foreign.
And yet that was what Loki was doing.
She watched, slack jawed as Loki raised both hands in the air above the balcony railing and made a tearing motion with them.
A half second later, there came a noise like the sky was being rent and she clapped her hands over her ears at the altogether unpleasant noise.
But her eyes took in the sight that followed the sound and they widened exponentially.
In between the blue and the orange and the pink of the Qartheen sky, a wide crack had appeared, a crack that had nothing beyond it but blackness.
And then….the stars.
There were so many of them and they were so bright and so many different colors that she almost wanted to clap her hands over her eyes to protect them while simultaneously opening them wider in order to see everything.
"What…What is this?" she managed to ask, her breathing uneven.
Loki looked oddly pleased with himself. "This my lady, is just a small view of the cosmos that surrounds your entire world. You are now the only being born into this realm that has looked beyond the stars."
There was absolutely nothing that she could say to that.
"Are we going to be walking among them?" she asked, turning to him in disbelief and awe. Her expression must have been a sight to behold, but because a smile, real and genuine and almost warm curved his mouth upward.
"In a way," he said. "Allow me to show you."
He holds out his hand and after a brief hesitation borne of her own self-preservation after a lifetime with Viserys, she takes it.
And together, they walked through the doorway into the universe itself.
The first thing that Daenerys saw was a complete view of the cosmos like Loki had said. She was surrounded by velvety blackness, the stars so close and yet so very far away. Not one of them was the same color as another; they surrounded her in a hurricane of vermilions, diamonds, magenta's and scarlets. Each one was shining and twinkling with its own pulsing light.
Some were in complete stasis while others raced across the sky in front of her, faster than she could follow. Their tails of fire were more brilliant than the scales of any of the dragons that she had seen, shinier and more glimmering than the finest jewel and brighter than any star she had been able to see from the balcony of her chamber in Qarth.
She wasn't aware that her mouth had fallen open until she heard Loki chuckling beside her and glanced up at him.
All the tension that he had previously been holding on his face in the last few weeks since he had taken command of Qarth seemed to drain away, making him look years younger. There was a contentment on his face that she had only ever seen with Jormungandr and for one strange moment, she wondered what else it would take to give him such an expression.
If being one with the stars was the thing to give someone that sheer amount of happiness and contentment, then she wished to be in them all the time.
"Daenerys?"
She blinked, realizing at the last minute that she was swaying slightly back and forth as she looked around to try and see everything.
The blonde glanced up, saw the amusement on his face and blushed slightly before twisting her hands together. "I apologize…I've just never seen anything so beautiful before. Thank you for showing it to me."
When she looked up again, he was watching her with an expression that seemed just a little too blank. He almost seemed confused about what to do with her gratitude. "There's still more to see."
She blinked, forgetting that this was just the start of the journey and took a deep breath forcing herself to not get too sidetracked. "What happens now?"
"Now?" Loki asked, his mouth curving upward in an odd half smirk. "Now I want you to look down."
It seemed as if he was teasing her about something but Daenerys was too enthralled by everything she had seen at this point in order to not be curious.
Doing so caused her eyes to widen once more.
She was standing on a road made of light.
It was the most beautiful and yet terrifying thing that she had ever seen. It almost seemed to be pulsing beneath her feet with a beat and a melody all its own.
As she concentrated, Daenerys felt her hands begin to tremble when the sounds grew louder, ebbing and flowing with the movement of the cosmos around her.
She glanced up at Loki who had folded his arms across his chest and appeared to be highly pleased when himself as he took in her reaction.
"Is….Is that…singing?" she whispered, barely moving her lips.
"The song of Yggdrasil," he replied, a small smile on her face. "I believe that you are the first human to ever hear it."
It was a symphony in her ears, streaming endlessly like a waterfall over her senses, making her want to close her eyes and take it all in, but at the same time stay wide awake and open up each and every one of her senses so that she could hear, see, touch, taste and smell it.
As she looked around, the road of light pulsed away from them, leading upward at a steep angle, curving away from them and into the distance like a promise of revealed mysteries if they would just follow it.
It seemed to branch off at times all paths leading in different directions and it was only when she took a step back that Daenerys eyes widened.
She could see all of it.
Yggdrasil was the world tree, Loki had told her. But he had neglected to mention that the universe functioned in the shape of a tree.
But here she was, standing on a branch made of light which connected to a veritable glowing tree that was utterly enormous. The whole entity was pulsing with a light and song and energy all its own.
Her attention moved to the ends of the branches, taking in the enormous jewel like orbs attached to it.
"Are those…." She trailed off words failing her.
"The other realms," Loki said from somewhere beside her.
"They're enormous!"
"Did you expect them to be small?" the god asked with some amusement.
Daenerys didn't honor that with a response, her eyes enormous as she took in the realms sitting perfectly balanced on Yggdrasil's branches. She could make nothing out of their swirling depths, save their enormity and colors.
Seeing all of this…the universe laid out before her in all of its splendor…caused a wonderfully warm feeling to bloom in her chest. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned began to burn uncontrollably.
A hand touched her cheek and Daenerys blinked, feeling the warm wetness as it was wiped away.
Horrified, she realized that this was the second time in as many weeks that she had cried in front of her host and wanted to curse at herself for her own foolishness.
A moment later however, she felt herself still when his fingers continued to brush the moisture from her cheeks. His touch was careful and if she didn't know any better, she might have called it reverent.
But that would be foolish of course.
"Are you well?" he asked quietly and she could only laugh, breathless. "Would you be…seeing all this for the first time? Realizing that the world, nay the universe has been right here waiting to be seen?"
His expression, if anything, became even more unreadable. "I suppose I didn't. The universe has always been at my fingertips. I've never really thought about what it would be like for someone to see it for the first time all at once. I have always lived near the stars after all. I…apologize if you are overwhelmed."
She blinked and stared up at him in surprise. "I am overwhelmed. But most of all I am…awed…and joyful. I am experiencing something so much…greater than anything I've ever known. And once again it's because of you. Thank you."
The sheer gratefulness that poured into her words surprised even her and a strange light lit in his emerald eyes that she didn't know the source or emotion of.
"You are welcome," he said simply and then he lowered his hands from her face and stepped away. She immediately felt the loss of her hands and wanted to berate herself for her own uncontrollable emotions.
"Now then," she said scrubbing furiously at her eyes. "I suppose we should be going. I could stand here and stare at the stars forever but I know there is a purpose to our journey and I would like to see it through to its conclusion."
Loki nodded, his eyes still on her face. "Very well then. Follow me."
He turned around without another word and strode up the road made of light and color and sound, forcing Daenerys to follow after him.
She had to physically watch where she was going for fear of wandering too far to the left or to the right and falling off the path into the stars.
When this is all over, she thought furiously to herself. I will ask that he take me here again and I will stand for hours and watch the stars and have him point out to me each one.
It didn't even seem odd to her that she wanted to stand there and watch the galaxy with him for hours.
Instead, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
W
Vanaheim was a revelation.
The journey to reach this realm that Loki had told her about seemed to take hours and yet no time at all. The god set a swift pace upon the road of light, forcing Daenerys to nearly have to run at times in order to keep up with him.
There seemed to be no rhyme of reason to the road and its winding style and there was so much to look at and to listen to that the blonde nearly lost Loki several times in her pausings.
Finally however, Loki drew to a stop and she blinked, realizing that they had entered one of the branches of Yggdrasil.
"What now?" she asked.
"Hold still," Loki muttered and grasped her by the wrist. A second later there was another obscene tearing sound followed by a rush of warm air that had Daenerys unconsciously closing her eyes.
"We're here."
The blonde opened her eyes to find herself standing at the corner of an incredibly opulent city.
It was far grander than Qarth, though the style of some of the buildings was similar. The streets were somewhat narrow and very odd flying crafts raced through the sky, though oddly enough the blonde did see the presence of some horses.
People in strange but beautiful clothes walked by, paying neither Loki nor Daenerys any mind. In the back of her mind, the blonde supposed that was a good thing given that she was gaping at everything and everyone like a landed fish.
Loki's intent gaze focused on her and she slammed her jaw shut as fast as possible, cheeks aflame. Gods it seems everything this sorcerer does manages to undo me. I can't maintain any form of regality when I'm around him, it's impossible!
She took a deep breath and focused on him rather than this strange new world that she had stepped into. "I assume you know how to find the library from here?"
"Indeed."
She ignored the amusement in his tone. "Lead on then."
He regarded her for another long moment and Daenerys rubbed somewhat anxiously at her arms. She hated when he stared at her like that, like he was reading every inch of her face. Despite whatever strange things the stone had done to her just by being in its presence, she was just as vulnerable to his perusal and introspection as she had been the first time that he had laid eyes on her.
Finally he turned around and gestured for her to follow him, which she did gratefully.
Somehow she managed to not get lost as they wandered through a city that was larger and more grand than anything that she had ever seen before.
But perhaps what stood out to Daenerys the most was the fact that when she looked to the heavens, she could see beyond the atmosphere, right to the very stars themselves.
She couldn't view them with as much stark clarity as she had when she had been walking upon Yggdrasil itself, but to just view the heavens in such an intimate way as she had never been able to before…it was mind boggling.
How have I been ignorant to this much of the world…this much of the galaxy for so long? How blind have I truly been?
She then looked ahead to the form of the dark haired god and smiled softly. I suppose it just took the right person to show me just how big all of life truly is.
They found the library without any trouble, Loki seemed to know where he was going and Daenerys tried to grasp the knowledge once again that she was companions with a dimension hopping, universe traveling god.
It was a large building, built in the form of an enormous spiral reaching to the heavens. Daenerys would have liked to stop and have a better look at the structure that appeared to be made of solid silver, but Loki strode towards it as if it were the most mundane piece of architecture that ever existed.
It was yet another thing to add to her list of things that she did not know and would take years to understand.
Once they had entered the place, Daenerys found that she had to crane her neck to see to the very top and even then, she wasn't convinced that she would be able to see all of it.
The stacks of books curved with the integrity of the structure, making the blonde have to twist her neck in a roundabout fashion in order to take in its inner breadth and height.
"Are you coming?"
Daenerys looked back down to find that Loki was standing ten steps away from her. His arms were crossed against his chest and he had an expectant look on his face that was also equal parts amused. "We don't have all day."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Well pardon me for amazed at each new thing that I see. It's not often that one travels to another realm after all."
His smirk widened. "If you keep gaping at everything, this might just be our last visit."
Daenerys huffed and hurried to catch up with him. "Lead on then mylord."
And he did.
Loki led her deep into the library with sure strides making Daenerys wonder just how often he had visited this place before.
He's one thousand years old, she thought to herself, eyeing his back carefully. I'm sure that there are many places that he has traveled during his life.
The deeper they went into the library, the fainter the light above them became until Daenerys began to feel as if she were underground.
Finally, when only a thin stream of light could be seen, landing directly on a table in front of them, with stacks of books still curved, but packed tightly around them, did Loki stop.
Daenerys paused and raised a pale brow. "I take it that the tomes that contain the oldest information are at the very center of the library and the more recent ones span the outsides?"
The look he shot her as he took a seat was mildly approving. "Indeed. Only those who are truly desperate for knowledge will venture this far in."
"Are we that desperate then?"
Loki paused for a moment, eyes rising to the ceiling so very high above them before answering. "If I am in possession of what I think I am…well then it would be no stretch of the imagination to say that we are."
A chill crept up Daenerys skin and she swallowed hard before taking the seat across from him. "Very well then. Tell me what we are looking for and I will do my best to assist."
The approving look deepened as he took her in. "As you say. See if you can find any titles that contain the words Infinity Stones."
W
Their search took them hours.
Loki had offered her a rudimentary explanation of what these Infinity Stones were and to say that she was shocked was something of an understatement.
Apparently long ago, an ancient cosmic being had taken its life from loneliness and its powers had split themselves into six singularities. Loki explained that they had studied this strange phenomenon long before arriving in Essos but he did not explain anything else about his life prior to Qarth.
Suffice it to say, the blonde was bursting with questions.
But because she had enough respect for the god she was beginning to call friend, she bottled them all and concentrated on looking for what he had asked of her.
Her arms ached by the time she had piled the tomes that she thought might be of use on the table.
Loki had already made his selections and was flipping through them far too quickly for him to be actually taking in all the information, but Daenerys decided it would do neither of them any good for her to point that out.
Besides, she had recently learned from Jormungandr that there were many things about Loki that she did not know. The blonde wouldn't have been surprised if she could add the title of photographic memory to the list of the god's attributes.
After a time of watching him, she picked up one of her own books and opened it, only to struck in the face with a depiction of the origins of the universe itself.
Instantly she wanted to close it.
It was one thing to know that gods walked amongst humans and that she was staying in the home of one, any quite another to be told that she would be granted access to the stars and the cosmos in general, or that there were worlds beyond them that she could get to, worlds that were clearly far more advanced than the one she knew.
For one wild moment, Daenerys didn't want to go back to Qarth.
She had never been given the luxury of traveling before, never been able to have dreams for herself that contained interdimensional travel that seemed to be as simple as a road on horseback across the Red Waste.
And now here she was.
It was…awe inducing.
What if I asked him to leave me here? She thought to herself wildly. What if I stayed in Vanaheim and then if I felt like it, made my way into the greater universe at large? I have no responsibilities here, no obligations, no assassins to ensure my death. I would be completely and utterly free.
It was a terrifying and wonderful thought, one that she knew she would only entertain in the deepest watches of the night because of how impossible it seemed.
But still, it was there.
What if?
"What are you thinking so hard about?" Loki asked without looking up from his book. "I can practically hear your thoughts from here."
The blonde snorted and glanced down at the first page of her book which included an intricate illustration of Yggdrasil, complete with drawings of what seemed to be all its stars and planets. "I suppose I'm coming to terms with my own ignorance."
That caused him to look up from the tome. "I feel I am going to need more of an explanation."
Daenerys gestured to the books and then all around them in a frustrated manner. "I am useless when it comes to the grand design of the universe. No more than a few moons ago I would look at the stars and see nothing beyond them. But here I am, sitting amongst galaxies and contemplating such powers as to cause gods to fear for their wellbeing. My life made sense!"
It was with this last word that she slapped the page of the book, causing some of the pages that Loki had been scribbling notes into to flutter and become displaced.
She grimaced in apology. "And now I find that very little makes sense at all and I am useless in understanding any of it."
Loki narrowed his eyes at her. "When did you become so self-deprecating?"
Daenerys folded her arms across her chest. "Since I was introduced to a god who has blown open my entire understanding of how the universe works. I had an understanding of my own importance in Essos. I knew I was valuable to want to make an ally or an enemy of, someone worthy of attention, no matter if it was good or bad."
She shook her head and gestured once more to the pile of books. "And now I find that my pride has taken a most grievous blow because all of this reveals that I not only know nothing about the world, but that I am nothing in the grand scheme of the universe."
She laughed bitterly, both saddened and disgusted with her own sense of pride.
Loki was quiet for a long time, but she could feel his gaze on her and found that she couldn't quite meet it.
"Do you think your value truly lies in how much you know?" he asked and his tone sounded more curious than mocking.
"Not only that," Daenerys replied. "It also lies in how much I do not know, which according to these tomes is nearly infinite. I am feeling…unsure of my place in the world now that I have been exposed to a much larger part of it and that is a…humbling thing."
"Isn't it better to know now rather than proceed with your life in ignorance?" Loki asked and she got the feeling that for as much as he was attempting to placate her, it wasn't something that he was used to doing.
"How would you feel if you were in my place?" she asked curiously. "And your entire concept of reality and the world had been shifted?"
He stared at her for long enough that she wondered if such a question had ever been posed to him before.
But then a thoughtful look crossed his handsome features, and he cocked his head to one side. It made him look uncharacteristically young and Daenerys smiled faintly at the image. She wondered absently if one thousand and three hundred years was considered young by those of the realm that he had come from.
"I suppose I would want to know everything that I can about what I did not know," he said finally. "It would not sit well with me for there to be knowledge that I did not understand. I would want to know it all."
Daenerys sat back in her chair and smiled at him. "Then I suppose I will have to set aside my pride and do just that."
She thumbed through the first pages of the tome, determined to not let her own maudlin sentiments get the better of her. All the while though, she could feel his eyes on her, calculating, assessing.
"Is something the matter?" she asked when it became too much to concentrate on what she was reading.
"I feel I should ask," he began and his manner seemed somewhat curious. "Is your desire to know more, to know all of the universe born out of pride for what you do not know, or a decision to be better than what you or your ancestors were?"
Daenerys blinked at the oddity of the inquiry. "I…suppose it's a bit of both. There were a great many things about my life before I met you that I was kept ignorant of; the true nature of my birth father and his reign being one of them. It was a mistake that led me to looking rather a fool in the face of certain people. My father was no great king, man or husband. He was a monster in all respects who burned people alive with wildfire and abused my mother for his own sport. I am the product of terrible violence and I cannot help but want to distance myself from that with as much knowledge as I can. If I can perhaps better myself in this way, then it might prove that I can rise above the atrocities of my predecessors, near and far. I don't wish to be ignorant anymore…but I find that I am a bit lacking on how to go about rectifying that."
She looked up into his sharp green eyes and offered him a small sad smile. He blinked and they narrowed slightly. "You've never been quite this maudlin before."
That prompted a laugh out of the blonde. "I suppose I have never had much caused before the last year to be so. You have changed me very much my lord. I suppose I should thank you."
"Tell me something," Loki said suddenly. "You never knew your father and were told information about him that you believed to be true. How did you feel when that information turned out to be a lie?"
Daenerys snorted and gave him a bitter smile. "I was ill on the side of the road. I did not believe it at first because such a lie seemed too big to be real, too contrived and if I am being honest, too cruel. And yet there were many who had heard stories of the exploits of the Mad King. Too many to be denied."
She twisted her hands together in her lap, a part of her completely disbelieving that she was being so honest with him. "I didn't understand why I had been lied to, why I had been told that my father was a good man who was beloved by the people and betrayed by our enemies. But after the death of my brother, I began to understand that it was because Viserys held a certain image of our father and our elder brother that he tried to uphold all his life. He didn't believe any other truth than the one that he had chosen. And it was his inability to live up to what he wanted that was one of the reasons that he went mad as well. Looking back I suppose I was born to a race of monsters. My father, Rhaegar, Viserys, all of them had their own form of madness and did unspeakable things. It often made me wonder if it too was my own destiny to go mad or to be a monster like so many other Targaryens."
Loki had gone very still in his chair and Daenerys picked up on his tenseness. She wondered at the cause of it and was about to ask when he spoke again. "And do you believe that then that you are one. That being a monster was simply something you were born to be and have no control over?"
Daenerys regarded him thoughtfully. He was nervous she sensed, through her latent exposure to the artifact that Loki had found in the House of the Undying.
But more than that, he was afraid. A deep cloak of black hung about his shoulders like a shroud and Daenerys had to swallow hard at the sight of it. She still wasn't used to being able to see other people's emotions in the form of colors surrounding them and this felt very much like an invasion of privacy.
With an effort, she shoved her fears aside. "No. At least not anymore."
He met her eyes sharply, his own narrowed almost in challenge. "And why not? What separates you from them? Your blood is the same."
"Other than distance and time?" she asked wryly. "The answer would be my own choices. How I was born, or who I was born to, does not have a bearing on what I myself choose to do. I didn't know my father, I have only heard stories. I can let those stories affect me, for ill…or I can as the last remaining Targaryen, the last of my house's odd and bloody legacy, choose to be better than they were. Not just by the regaining of our magic and creating a different future, but on how I as a person choose to conduct myself. I can choose to act like the monster that my father and brother's were and perhaps die a similar death to them. Or I can choose to be better and hope that my choices and my compassion will be enough to make a lasting impression on the world. Not just for the sake of my house but for my own mind and my own heart."
She fell silent, somewhat embarrassed that she had chosen to reveal so much of her inner thoughts to him.
But there were times when she was around Loki where she just couldn't help herself. It was nice to speak to an equal without fear of reprisal or where she didn't have to give orders. He would never address her as your grace, and oddly enough, she didn't want him to.
It was nice to have a friend, that was all.
When she finally looked up from her twisted hands, it was to find Loki watching her intently. Newfound abilities aside, his keen sense in reading her was just as intimidating as ever. She wondered what he was seeing.
"You truly believe that," he said in a voice little more than a whisper. It was less a question and more of an incredulous accusation. If she didn't know any better, she might have said that he sounded angered by her answers.
"That choice is greater than birth, or destiny?" she replied softly. "Yes. Yes I do."
He continued to stare at her as if this were knowledge that he had never heard before. There was incredulous shock in his eyes and more than a little bitterness that she had no idea the source of. But there was a part of her that wanted to.
"Well then," he said finally and turned his attention back to the tome in front of him. "Perhaps there is hope for you yet."
W
Sorry for the lateness of this update, life has been a bit hectic lately.
After all the earth shattering revelations of the last few chapters, combined with the appearance of an Infinity Stone, I really wanted Loki and Dany to have a chapter where they just...talked. I feel like they haven't had a lot of deep conversations lately and they need to given that this story is going to be a romance.
I wanted to highlight a few important things in this chapter. Both Loki and Dany are beginning to see the other with new eyes. There are sides to each of them that are beginning to be revealed and it is those sides that are going to cause them to love the other. I didn't realize that there were a few interesting similarities between Loki's past and Dany's past that are going to serve as a connection between them going forward. Loki will begin to respect Dany because of her choices and she will of course admire him for his great skill as a politician and as a sorcerer.
Anyway, that's all for now. We'll be back to the Infinity Stone discussion in the next chapter and how this will shape our two main characters as their paths continue to converge.
Thanks for reading and don't forget to review!
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