Things got weird about six months later.
They'd stayed in a lot of different cities by then. The main criteria for choosing them was that they be interesting in some way, and that none of them have an apocalypse on the book for at least fifty years from the time they arrived.
The city where they were staying this time was the capital of Loombris-7, in 2016. They'd been going to try New York City, Earth, around 2010, except that Sylvie had made the mistake of asking why, if Loki had been there on his glorious purpose a year or two later, there wasn't an apocalypse there for a few hundred more years. She'd only meant to tease him, but he'd gotten very uncomfortable, said something about how it wasn't for a lack of trying, then changed not only the subject but the itinerary as well.
And so now, instead of being there, they were in the midst of a city much stranger, where the houses weren't built out of brick or steel, but were grown. Everyone there lived inside a giant tree, or bush, or shrub, which had been guided into its particular shape from the moment it had decided to poke itself out of the dirt. It was enough to make you wonder what shapes the houses would have been, if they'd been allowed to grow as they pleased. Thankfully, they were only plants.
Newcomers tended to end up in the houses that hadn't quite grown entire roofs yet, or where the walls were...brambly. They were lodged in what was by all appearances a rose bush without any flowers on it, but quite a few large, nasty-looking spiders that liked to come inside when it rained. They'd have been out of there the first night if it hadn't been for the views--none of which were available from their room, but had to be traveled to, hikes up steep sets of stairs carved into the bark of ancient huge trees, or mile-high climbs up series of vines, some narrower or more slippery than others (and god help you if one of them snapped beneath your weight, when each of them took between two decades and several centuries to be cultivated).
"There is actually an apocalypse here," Sylvie said, heaving her way up the vine beside Loki's. The branch they were headed for wasn't more than fifty feet above them now, but there wasn't any rush to get there, especially given the sun wouldn't set for another hour. "On the other side of the planet, at the end of the next millennia. There's a drought, which causes a fire like nothing you've ever imagined. It spreads across the whole continent. I only tried going there once, but even before the fire started it was far too hot to be bearable. The air itself felt like it was about to catch."
Loki, who was sometimes delighted and always interested in hearing about swathes of destruction, and who always had some sort of commentary to make, had remained quiet through all this. Sylvie snuck a glance over to the vine he was on. He was still there, which was good, but he was about twenty feet down, which might be the opposite.
"Loki? You all right?"
For a second, he didn't answer. Then he looked up at her, with eyes that were just a little glassy, when even that much was enough to make her stomach turn in worry. "It's too hot here ," he said, though it really wasn't. "It's making me--lightheaded."
"Shit," Sylvie said, stomach dropping all the way to the shadowy ground far, far beneath them. "Hold on, okay?"
She headed back down, carefully, still not in a hurry, because being in a hurry while going down was more likely to have her slipping and plummeting half a mile than being in a hurry while going up was.
When she was parallel to him, close enough to touch if swinging this way or that hadn't been a terrible idea for multiple reasons, she said, "How are you feeling now?"
He had a good grip on the vine, at least, and the soles of his shoes were dug firmly into one of the big knobs that ran up and down the thing. His face was turned away from her, pressed against another of the knobs.
"A little better," he said, and turned to look at her, and then, for some idiotic reason, looked down. "--No, make that worse. Much worse."
"Okay. Hold on," Sylvie said, and thought fast. There'd be no carrying him down. Up was a better bet, but could still be really bad if he were to let go, or even if he shifted around too much. She couldn't remember what the weight limits on the vines were, even, other than that individually they were both well beneath them. There was really only one thing to do. "I'm going to open a door. Under you, so all you have to do is fall through it."
"Oh, good, falling. I love falling."
Sylvie braced herself on the vine, reached for the TemPad. This much, at least, she didn't have to think about. She didn't even have to glance at the buttons to press the ones she wanted.
Beneath Loki, a Time Door appeared, slicing through the vine beneath him and about half of one of one of the others. As the vine fell, plummeting down into the shadows, Sylvie said, "You can let go now, if you want."
"I don't, actually," Loki said, but he looked over at her again. Then he looked down. Then he started a sort of slow slide in the way he was looking, so that it seemed to take forever for the rest of him to follow his feet through the door.
As soon as he was gone, Sylvie hopped in after him. When she landed, they were back in their room, the one with the prickly walls. It had been raining again, so everything was damp. There was an enormous spider along the far wall, so bright yellow it may as well have been glowing. As for Loki, he was in a heap on the floor.
Sylvie crouched next to him. "Still dizzy now?"
"Lightheaded," he said. "And, yes."
"Still hot?"
"This planet is hot. What you were saying, before, about the apocalypse they're to have. It's like that. Can't you feel it?"
It felt about the same to Sylvie as it had among the vines, as it had when they'd arrived. But Loki was beaded with sweat, beginning to turn red.
"I think you're sick," she said. She laid her hand on his shoulder and found him radiating heat, touched the back of her hand to his cheek and found it even hotter. "Have you eaten anything I haven't since we've been here?"
But she knew the answer to that. They liked all the same things, and poached from each other's plates constantly.
"I don't know. I vomited this morning," Loki said. "And yesterday. And a few times last week."
"You are sick. Why didn't you say--oh, shit."
"What?"
As she tapped new instructions into the TemPad, Sylvie said, "I forgot we're Jotuns. I forgot all this time."
"But what does that have to do with--" Loki started.
But before he could finish, another Time Door had opened beneath them, and they both went tumbling through it.
*
On Knacle-12, in 2050, Sylvie looked around for Loki. He'd landed a few feet away from her, but instead of being huddled over, as he had been before, he was struggling to his feet.
"What's going on?" he said, then seemed to notice the whiteness all around them, the way he was calf-deep in snow, with more of it coming down. "I don't--I feel better. Why do I feel better?"
"You needed to be somewhere cooler, I think."
"Yes, all right, but how did you come to that conclusion? And why does it matter that we're Jotuns?"
"Um," Sylvie said, completely and totally out of the sort of comeback she'd generally have come up with. "Look--how much do you know about Jotuns? About that part of us?"
"Not as much as you do, apparently. What's going on?"
"I'm not even sure if I'm right," Sylvie said, though she was almost completely sure. The vomiting could have been anything on its own, but the rest of it...
"About what?"
"I--"
" Will you just tell me if I'm dying ?!"
"You're not dying," Sylvie said. "I do think you're pregnant, though."
*
"If it's a joke, it's not funny," Loki said a few minutes later. "You've chosen the worst possible timing to cultivate your mischievous side."
After she'd said it, Loki had simply stared at her a moment. Then he'd turned around and walked away. A hundred feet in the direction he went, he'd come upon the cliff ledge, which was where she'd found him. That was where they were sitting now, together, legs dangling off the edge as the wind ripped at them this way and that. Below them was an enormous canyon stretching out to the horizon, at the bottom of which lay a sparkling black ribbon of a river. Frozen stiff and still, waiting for a spring that wouldn't come for another few years.
"It's not a joke. Do you really not know anything about them?"
Loki sighed. "They're blue. Red eyes. They're usually a lot bigger than we are, which is likely why they abandoned us. Their touch in battle turns a person's skin frostbitten unless they're one of them and don't know it. They hate Asgard and don't like me, personally or otherwise. That more or less covers my breadth of knowledge on the subject."
His shoulders were hunched over, and he seemed to be going out of his way not to look at her. Sylvie was used to being the one who closed off, who didn't want to give whatever Loki seemed to want from her, even if he never got around to asking for it. It was weird, not being the one on the defensive this time.
"Okay," she said. "Some of that's...really specific. But right now the first thing you should know is that Jotuns don't have sexes like we do--or choose them like we did, I guess. They're all everything, all at once. So any Jotun can catch pregnant by any other Jotun."
"We don't even know that I am...that," Loki said. "How many other Jotun diseases have similar symptoms?"
Sylvie shrugged, then, realizing he still wasn't looking at her and wouldn't have seen it. "I don't know. Not many, I'd guess."
"How do we find out?"
"No idea. But if you want to try to rule it out, maybe you could do something with magic. You know, look and see if there's a baby."
Now Loki did look at her, with an incredulous expression on his face. "How often do you imagine I've been asked to check for the presence of fetuses inside people's bodies ?"
"Wow," Sylvie said. "So the great magician is just admitting he can't do it?"
She saw the moment he saw the trap, as well as the moment he gave in to it. His face was just like that, basically all the time. Open, easy to read even when he was determined not to be. A lot easier to follow along with than hers, Sylvie hoped. "I could if I liked."
"So do it now, then."
"Maybe I will," Loki said. "Or maybe I won't."
*
It took a while. It was hard to say whether it was taking a while because he didn't want to or because he was figuring it out, except for all the times that it was incredibly obviously the first one. Finally, though, Loki said, "There."
Before them appeared something that looked a bit like a portal--not so much a door you could pass through as a window you could peer into. But instead of there being buildings or scenery on the other end, there was something else.
"Is that what's inside you right now?" Sylvie asked, squinting at the flesh-colored blob that seemed to be floating around in...something.
"Evidently. I'm not convinced it's actually a baby, however."
"What would you say it is then?"
"A parasite," Loki said. "An awful one. Perhaps it was one of those spiders. It must have done something unmentionable to me in my sleep, and now this...monstrosity is growing there."
"I don't know. It does have a thing."
"What thing?"
"The part that's attaching the jellybean part to the rest of you."
"--Attaching the what part?"
Sylvie pointed. "Okay, so you have the blob with alien eyes part there. And then you have this other part, that attaches. I think that means it's a baby instead of...whatever else."
"I suppose," said Loki doubtfully.
The image hung in front of them for a while longer, the blob continuing to float there. They watched it, thinking or not thinking pretty much all the same things, probably.
"A baby," Loki said, after it had been quite some time.
"Looks like," Sylvie agreed. The image began to fade. "A spider would have laid eggs, by the way. And there'd have been a lot more than just the one."
"Oh, don't start."
Sylvie let it go, at least until they were a third of the way down the mountain and she remembered something else he'd said. "Do you really not know what a jellybean is?"
*
There weren't really people in this part of the world. But though they'd stuck to cities until now, since hiding among the masses seemed less likely to attract attention, neither of them suggested they try to find one. Instead, once Loki had caught up to the fact that he'd have to stay somewhere at least this cold until he wasn't pregnant anymore--unless of course he wanted to burn to death from normal temperatures--they set up camp in a small cave they'd found. Loki's magic made it comfy enough, and the parts that weren't, Sylvie poked him about until he changed them.
It seemed grayer work than it had in the past, somehow. It had been shocking news, Sylvie supposed. She supposed she had yet to touch it herself, outside of the shock and relief of the initial realization. But it seemed wrong for Loki to be so quiet about it. He was never quiet about anything, but this seemed to have left him struck dumb. It seemed to have taken him somewhere else. It left Sylvie wondering if she ought to chase him. She'd never had to, before. Follow him, certainly, if he needed help being pulled out of some hole. But not chase.
In the end, her hand looked for his of its own accord later that night, after they'd lain down next to each other in the bed he'd conjured up for them. Their fingers wound together tightly, a comfort made all the more comforting for how quickly and how strongly he grabbed her back.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Of course," Loki replied glibly, followed a moment later by: "I don't know. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before."
"Me neither."
They lay there for a while, staring up at the stalactites on the ceiling, which glowed faintly green from the floating light Loki had set off to the side of their things.
"You know, you don't have to be if you don't want to be," Sylvie said. "You could probably get out of it with your magic."
"Yeah?"
"And then not letting it happen again would be really easy, if you wanted."
"Would it."
"I could show you. If you wanted. It's the one other bit of magic I know."
Loki looked at her. There was, for a moment, a new expression on his face. Later, Sylvie would think it had been something like hurt, which was ridiculous since he couldn't yet have known one way or the other how he felt about things. She knew for certain he couldn't have, because she didn't and she'd at least given thought to the subject before now.
"That would be your preference, I take it," he said.
"It was," Sylvie said. "Back then. There were times I was lonely enough I wouldn't have minded, honestly. But I couldn't afford to be that vulnerable. Physically or otherwise. So I decided I wouldn't be."
"But you don't mind if I'm the vulnerable one."
"Pick a complaint and stick to it," Sylvie said. "You can't just switch them around to win arguments."
*
The next day, they went berry-picking, not so much because they needed to--Loki could conjure plenty of things they liked to eat, none of which were ever burnt, stale or in any way spoiled, which was more than you could say for a lot of what Sylvie'd had to eat over the years--as because sitting around in a dark cave for the next few months seemed like a depressing idea.
"Where are they?" Loki called over the wind, from about ten feet to Sylvie's left. "I don't see anything."
"They ought to be somewhere in this drift, I think. The lumpy-looking one," she called back, and put on her gloves and started digging around in the snowdrift in front of her. Soon enough, she started finding them: purple fruits each the size of her fist. They must once have been a pure black, but were now translucent all the way through from their time beneath the snow and ice.
"They're poisonous in the summer, when they grow," she said, when they were on the way back, each of them carrying a basket full of the things. "Then winter comes, and the cold leeches the toxins out after a year or two."
"--Are we certain it's been a year or two?"
"These are fine. All mine are, at least. Just, don't put it in your mouth if it's a solid color."
Sylvie'd eaten three by the time Loki tried his first one. Hilarious how picky of an eater he could be, sometimes. She'd certainly never had the luxury.
He took one bite, made a face. Chewed it, swallowed, took a bigger bite. He must have discovered he liked it, at that point, because he made short work of that one and the next one.
Later, when they were good and stuffed and Sylvie, at least, was considering a nap on what really was a quite comfortable chair, Loki said, "Do you suppose this could have been our nexus event?"
"What, berry-eating in the future? That's stupid," said Sylvie, before she remembered. "Oh. Right. Yeah, maybe. Probably. Even the first glimmer of possibility for something like this would have to do it."
"It had better not be another Loki," said Loki. "I refuse to parent myself."
That was the first he'd said about parenting anything. It gave the strong impression he'd decided to do it. The "casual" way he glanced at her to check her reaction all but clinched it.
"That can't be how genetics work," said Sylvie, even though both of them were still largely in the dark about how Lokis did work, when it came to that level of things. Were they the same person down to their very atoms? Or were they more like the same soul, in two different bodies? If the latter, did that mean their soul was actually shattered into a thousand different bits? One of which was within an actual alligator? "Whatever it is, it's not going to be us. It's just going to be ours."
"You mean it's going to be mine," Loki said, so quickly it had to be a reflex rather than what he really meant. "Though I suppose I might be convinced to share."
"I helped make it. That makes it half mine. Perhaps I'll let you share it sometimes."
"That would be gracious of you, I suppose," said Loki, a bit too casually again. "But aren't you concerned?"
"Concerned about what?"
"Your vulnerability. You can't claim it hasn't increased just because you're not the one carrying it."
He was right. Sylvie'd thought of it, and then avoided thinking of it, since the day before. It was the source of the grayness: the knowledge, so stark and clear as to be undeniable, anymore, that she had more to lose now than she had since she'd lost everything.
"Don't be stupid," she said, because the last thing she was going to admit was how badly she'd wanted to run, when she'd gotten up in the morning. How easy it would have been, and how simple. He had to know it, because they were the same, but if she were to admit it that would make it real and cruel, when it wasn't really anything other than the last vestige of an instinct she didn't need anymore. "You've had me vulnerable since Lamentis, anyway. I've gotten over it."
Loki's face seemed to be full of the exact same things she felt, that must have been lying in wait beneath, all this time. "You're sure you don't mind?"
"It's you. So that makes it all right," Sylvie said, and immediately found the sincerity of the moment far too much to be borne. "Dipshit."
"Well, then," Loki said, and then he smiled, a little. Sylvie hadn't known she already missed seeing it. "I suppose that's settled."
And just like that, it seemed they'd made a decision--and that it hadn't been nearly as difficult a one as they might have expected.
*
A few days later, Sylvie finally got tired of Loki glancing at her, opening his mouth, and then shutting it again--a series of events he'd repeated at least six times since they'd gotten up in the morning.
"What?"
"It's just that I've been wondering," he said, without getting into what it was he'd been wondering about.
"Would you spit it out?"
"How do you know so much about Jotuns, anyway? I mean, did your parents tell you about them, or what?"
She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but that wasn't it. "Sort of," she said. "I mean, they might've? I don't know, really. But they did get me a book. That's the part I remember."
"There are books ?" Loki said, boggling at her like she'd suddenly grown flippers. "I never knew. Shame you don't still have it."
"Who says I don't?" And, when he boggled at her some more: "Did you think you're the only one who can hide things?"
She produced the book, which had been strapped to the usual place against her skin. It'd been a while since she looked at it, or done anything with it other than keeping up the habit of making sure she still had it. Now, showing it to Loki, it looked shabbier than she'd expected. It was a thin volume to begin with, a children's book. The spine was cracked, the pages visibly discolored. If you didn't know what the picture on the cover had been, you'd only have been able to guess because there was still a big smudge of blue on it.
Sylvie said, not knowing she meant to until it was on its way out of her mouth, "I used to think--still sort of think--it might've been my nexus event."
"What? You think the TVA pruned your timeline and tried to prune you because someone else gave you a book ?"
She didn't know what to do about that kind of righteous outrage, even less when it was for her sake. She didn't look at him, kept her eyes on the book as she said, "I was--angry, at first. I had a difficult time with it. Then they gave this to me, and at first I thought I'd--burn it, maybe, or cut it up. Throw it in the rubbish heap. But then, for some reason, I didn't. I read it. Then I read it a few more times. And I started to--I don't know. To accept it, sort of. Maybe that's what did it for me, in the end."
"--Sounds about right," Loki said tightly. His hand came to cover hers, though it was hard to keep from noticing he went out of his way not to touch the book itself.
"Anyway," Sylvie said, shaking out of it. "What I meant to get at. You can borrow it, if you'd like."
"--I think I would, actually."
Sylvie took a deep breath, then loosened her grip on the book so he could take it. "Don't throw it in the rubbish heap."
"I won't."
"Not even if you get tempted."
"I'm quite certain I will. But, understood."
So saying, Loki disappeared it, and they went about the day. Sylvie never did catch him reading it, but, a few weeks later, it appeared back in her things in the same condition it had left in.
*
The weeks passed, and then the months. They saw no one but each other, and though they did venture out at least every other day, one trip out for berries turned out to be very much like any other, whether or not they crossed a frozen lake to get there (they didn't dare spend too much time exploring the canyon, which was the most interesting landmark within walking distance; they'd seen enough avalanches from their ledge to know better than to risk it).
It was the sort of existence that felt as if it could easily have become claustrophobic. It worked for Sylvie, though. She'd never spent so long in one place, never had so much time to simply exist. Perhaps she'd have gotten lonelier than she was used to eventually, if she'd been there by herself. As it was, she didn't, nor did either of them seem bothered by short days and long nights of a life spent there in the midst of the cold and snow.
She'd have been happy enough to stay indefinitely. Maybe they even would have. Except that one day, she found Loki sitting on the side of the bed, holding his head in his hands.
"What's wrong?" Sylvie asked, rushing over to him.
"It's nothing."
"You're dizzy again, aren't you?" she asked,
" Lightheaded . You shouldn't worry about it. Really."
You're a shit actor. Are you hot again, too?"
"No. I don't even know why you'd ask me that."
"You're a shit liar, too," Sylvie said, before her hand had even come close enough to his forehead to discover it radiating heat. "Come on."
"I don't want to go there ," Loki said.
Sylvie rolled her eyes, which was lost on him considering his were closed. "We're just going outside."
It was the simplest thing, the easiest thing there was to try. He leaned on her on the way out the door. When he sank down into the huge snowdrift by the cave's entrance, she heard as well as saw him sigh with relief.
She let him enjoy it for a few minutes, until he was looking and probably feeling more like himself again, and then said, "You have all the same information I do."
"I can't," he said. "This will have to do."
"What about when it won't anymore? We both know won't work forever. You need to be somewhere a lot colder than this."
It didn't happen to all Jotuns who were expecting, but to a pretty decent minority. Sometimes, they did okay finding someplace cold to spend it. Other times, though, there was only one place cold enough, and they'd end up called back to it until they went.
"I told you, they hate me. I'll be skinned and eaten if I ever set another foot in that realm."
"You're being ridiculous."
"Very well. Perhaps I'll merely be tried and executed. Sounds better, doesn't it? Only it ends with a dead me, just the same."
"Staying here might do that, too," Sylvie pointed out. "And it can't be good for it , either."
She crouched down next to him, took his hand, laid both on top of the swell of his stomach. When first he'd begun showing, it had only been a little, a curving that wouldn't have had any greater meaning if they hadn't already known. Then, what had seemed like all at once, he had ballooned out, until now he was a really proper size for a pregnant person. There was kicking and everything, which you could feel from the outside if you happened to be touching him at the right moment. There was a kick now, the briefest flutter against the back of Sylvie's fingers. Who knew what it felt like to him. Something bigger, that was for certain. Something less fragile, maybe.
She thought about Loki, and she thought about Jotunheim. And, maybe because she'd been thinking of apocalypses for so long, she thought of that, too, even though at first it didn't seem to have anything to do with anything that was happening.
Then, all of a sudden, things slotted into place, and it did.
"I've got an idea about how we could manage, actually," she said.
*
The cold on Knacle-12 hadn't been bad for Sylvie at all. Ignorable at best, a bit chilly at worst, nothing a halfway decent coat couldn't fix for her.
The cold on Jotunheim was different. It was a bitter, sharp thing, cutting through every layer she'd put on before they left. There wasn't even any wind, and already it was a struggle to keep a shiver from running violently through her. It took only a glance at Loki to see he was reacting about the same way.
"It may actually be too cold here," he said. "Perhaps we should go back."
"You could change your shape," she said. "That'd help."
"Perhaps," he said, but then didn't.
Together, they walked over to the only thing there was to see upon the great glassy plain they'd stepped out onto. Not a canyon, but a great blackened pit, which seemed to go both on and downward forever.
"You really outdid yourself here," she said, looking out on the aftermath of Loki's own personal apocalypse.
Ignoring this, Loki said, "What exactly was your plan? Come here, stand around at the scene of my crime, and then...?"
"It's the year after. No one lives anywhere near it for a couple of decades. We'll only be here for a few months, so we ought to be left alone."
"That's the theory, anyway," Loki muttered. His voice was harder to read than his face, but by the time Sylvie looked at him to see what he was thinking, his face wasn't all that readable, either. What was readable was another one of those shudders, running through him just like the cold had to be. Then something else did, rushing over him like spilled paint upon a canvas. When it was done, he was different, but he was still the same. "...What?"
"I haven't seen a Jotun before," Sylvie said, taking in how blue he was, a darker shade than she'd expected, and the red of his eyes, which gleamed like rubies in the afternoon sun, and the lines on his face, which might have meant anything or nothing. "It's not so bad, you know. It's just different."
"Really." Loki's voice was flat; it couldn't have been clearer that he didn't believe her even slightly.
"How do you feel? Temperature-wise?"
"...Much better, now that you mention it," he said. "Not cold, but not hot either. Knacle was always a bit on the warm side for me, if I must be honest. This is...just right."
Hearing about it must have been what did it. The shiver Sylvie had been putting off ran through her. Once it started, it didn't seem to want to end. Even her teeth were beginning to chatter.
"Perhaps you should change, too," Loki said.
"Into what? I've already got on six layers."
Loki gave her a look, the kind that suggested she was being obtuse, and probably doing it on purpose to spite him.
"I don't know how to shapeshift," she said. "If that's what you're trying to get at."
"But do you want to?"
Yes, actually. Sylvie wanted to learn how to do virtually everything she'd ever seen Loki do. And this...the idea felt a lot different to her than it must to him. She hadn't been lying when she'd said she'd accepted her heritage a long time ago. She also hadn't been lying when she'd said she'd forgotten about it, before that. It was something that was there, that virtually always had been, but that didn't affect her one way or the other unless it happened to come up. Now that it had, she found she wanted it desperately, much more than she'd wanted to learn any of the other magics he'd been teaching her.
She didn't say any of this. It turned out she didn't have to.
"You actually do," Loki said wonderingly, before settling into lecture mode. "Well, it's much easier than illusion projection. None of that fuss about remembering or reproducing details, or holding them in your mind all the while. All you have to do is ask yourself, 'If I were a Loki, what kind of Jotun would I be?' Channel your will into the question, and there you have it."
"That does sound simple," Sylvie said, then, upon trying it: "Pity it doesn't work."
"Hmm. If you were a Sylvie, what kind would you be?"
"Yes, because that distinction hadn't occurred to me," Sylvie said. "Will you change back a moment?"
Loki changed back so quickly he must have been halfway to the idea all the while. Sylvie reached for his hand, the way they'd reached for each other so often, ever since Lamentis. Their fingers twined together, and she said, "Show me. Show me the same way I showed you."
"All right."
His hand in hers, Loki changed again. It happened slowly enough this time that Sylvie could feel the shift as it came over him. She could feel it, and, caught up in feeling it, hardly noticed anything else was happening until it was finished.
The cold wasn't cold anymore. Everything had taken on a rusty, not quite red sort of cast. When she looked down at their hands, hers were the same color as his. When she looked up at Loki, he was very still, and staring at her, eyes wide.
"What?"
"That's," he said, and swallowed hard. "It really isn't so bad, I suppose. Not if it's you."
"That might be the sweetest thing you've ever said to me," said Sylvie, which wasn't quite true if you counted how goopy he got after orgasms. But, close enough. "Should we be going? Or should we keep standing here being conspicuous?"
"By all means, lead the way."
Hand in hand, they turned away from the giant crater, and headed in a direction Sylvie was fairly sure would lead to somewhere where they could shelter at least long enough to get their bearings.
*
They'd walked a little ways when she got the sense he was wallowing again. Before she could confront it, or distract him, he said, "Do you suppose we'll make good parents?"
"No idea. It's not like I've had any real examples," said Sylvie.
"You might actually have been better off without having them," Loki said--and then seemed to have heard what he'd said, as well as a rebuttal she hadn't. "My apologies. That came out wrong. I'm not saying it's a good thing that you--I didn't mean it the way it sounded. I'm certain your versions of them were...fine. Wonderful, even. I'm jealous, honestly."
"Are you finished?"
"I didn't--yes."
They'd walked a little ways more when Sylvie said, after having mulled it over, "I think we'll do all right. I think most of it's just, deciding to do all right. Whatever that ends up taking."
"That sounds like a good way to think about it," said Loki doubtfully.
"It's better than being defeatist, anyway," said Sylvie.
In the snow ahead of them, there was something, a glittering in the sunlight. She was pretty sure it was the ice cabin that was supposed to be around here. The one that was standing empty, and would be for a while. The one where their baby could finish growing and then be born into safety. He, or she, would get to come into the world after the terrible things were over, would never be stuck in the spaces before them.
"There," she said, and led all of them toward it.