eighteen
"i want to be a part of
something big"
-

The rush around her was immense. Nothing like she'd ever experienced before, unable to be explained to those who had not lived it. Packed with colour, bright with light, and supremely loud as it roared against her ears. Whipped her hair in different directions and made her glad that she hadn't decided to spend time making it presentable that morning.

As the energy flew past them, Casia tried to take it all in. To remember it if they never did that again and to have one more story to tell her children and grandchildren when she was old and frail and unable to keep her eyes open for more than half an hour.

When the rush came to a halt and they walked into the control room, Casia's jaw hit the golden floor with such force it was a wonder the ground didn't shatter beneath.

"This place," Casia breathed out, choking on awe and wonder, "is beautiful. I've never seen anything like it and I've met Ryan Gosling." She turned to Thor with shimmering eyes which glinted with curiosity for the new terrain before her. "Why did you not bring me here sooner?"

"Asgard is no place for Midgardians," Lusine said quietly, fastening her grip on Cathal in mistrust of her cousin's compliance. Her words were unsettling to say the least, but Casia shrugged them from her shoulders and trampled them as she took a few steps forwards.

"If it had been known sooner what power you truly possessed, perhaps you would have journeyed here a long time ago," Thor replied, placing a steady hand on her shoulder as if he feared she would topple.

But Casia stood strong, even when the armoured figure turned to greet them. He was broad shouldered, muscular, towered above them, but he had a friendly-enough face. From the way he smiled and regarded Thor with utter respect, she knew him to be a figure of great knowledge.

As the gatekeeper, he was the one to alert of their presence before they'd even completed their transmigration to Asgard. Only moments later, guards stormed in and Casia was all-too-pleased to see them take the chained prisoners into their custody, Loki sulking the entire time and Cathal looking utterly murderous.

At the forefront was a woman crested with silver armour, hair braided back from her face to reveal the rise of her strong cheekbones and the depth of her eyes as she bore into the new arrivals.

Briefly, she regarded Thor and Lusine, but when her gaze fell upon Casia, she frowned.

"You have brought a Midgardian to Asgard?" She questioned, gesturing with her hand towards where Casia stood terribly out of place dressed in a leather jacket and jeans.

"This is Casia Radcliffe. She possesses a power which she cannot yet control," Thor said. Casia shifted uncomfortably beside him. "She will remain here for a short while before Lusine and herself depart for Remulan where I suspect they will remain for the foreseeable future." He took a step forward, moulding into his heritage. "This is Lady Sif," He told them.

The armoured woman did not smile, but bowed her head in acknowledgement.

"It is an honour," Sif began, but she did not seem thrilled in the slightest. She seemed to take one glance over Lusine before turning her head to the side, "Guards, Princess Lusine is also to be taken prisoner for crimes against the throne."

Stood next to Lusine, Casia felt that power shudder awake in a flash.

"Excuse me?" Lusine replied with a snap of her jaw as the two guards advanced. "You must be mistaken."

Thor gripped Casia's wrist and pulled her to the side, shaking his head when she turned to look at him desperately, begging for an intervention.

"Have you already forgotten the lives you have taken? The treason you plotted with your princely lover?" Lady Sif said coolly, not a drop of fear in her tone.

There was something respectable about that when she faced one of the most powerful beings who had ever walked the grounds of Asgard.

"It is not you who I shall defend myself to," Lusine sneered, not resisting as they fastened the icy chains around her wrists and ankles. "Why would I waste my time on a woman who just can't quite seem to realise when love is unrequited? That woman is a fool, a child, and not fit for service in the slightest."

Sif regarded her with a jaw that cranked tighter with every venomous word.

"Do you truly believe that he will ever love you?" Lusine stood strong as the guards tried to pull her onwards to where justice would be served by the iron fist of Odin, but the chaos yanked back. "Love you as a wife, not see you as yet another shield to block a killing blow. You are a weapon, not a lover." Lusine smiled maniacally, the words not missing a heartbeat as they flew from her mouth in flying daggers, meeting their target with ease.

She could see their shadow. Embedded in the heart of Lady Sif, running with blood as the chaos ran circles around her. Pulled at her hair, prodded her stomach. Laughed when she whirled and missed with the blade that had taken down many.

As good as it had been to be a saviour, she would not be humiliated.

"Take her away," Lady Sif simply said.

Lusine let out a low laugh as she let them drag her away to be marched through the gates with the other two.

Loki and Cathal both glanced to her, amusement dancing in their eyes.

"Not a word," Lusine warned in a growl, fury boiling within her, turning over and over with every step across the Bifrost.

Every inch of her hated it on Asgard. Despised the memories it brought flooding back to extinguish the newly birthed flicker of light that burned bright in the caverns of her heart.

Lusine glanced over her shoulder to where Casia and Thor walked a short distance behind them, the latter murmuring quiet words to the former. With that, Lusine kept putting one foot in front of the other, already plotting and scheming just how she would make her escape and how many Asgardians would have to die for it.

Leaning more towards the answer being exactly two every time one of the guards deliberately yanked on her chains.

-

-

"You're going to bail her out, right?" Casia asked, glancing to Thor with a flicker of an ember locked within the darkness of her eyes, reflecting with the colours of the Bifrost as they walked behind the prisoners, now made up of three Asgardians with their chins held high and shoulders squared, ready for battle.

"There is not much that I can do for Lusine now," Thor replied apologetically, his head bowing slightly. "As you know, she has not always had the best hold on her power and at one point in time it came extremely close to overcoming her."

"But she's different now. She can control it," she persisted, "and she helped save New York."

"Perhaps that will be enough to save her from imprisonment, but my father will not take her actions of treason lightly," Thor said, his words lacking in hope. he had been witness to the wrath of Loki and Lusine, had seen the fury in her eyes as she'd fought against him, and had seen the fear in her as she fell to, what should have been, her death.

Casia knew that wasn't how it worked. That actions didn't cancel one another out. Yes, Lusine had begun her change into a better woman, but that didn't mean the actions of the past were now nothing but dust in the wind. Despite it, Casia grit her teeth, walked with confidence and a knowledge that Lusine would get herself out of this.

She would not have gone so easily if she could not.

"You should defend her," Casia said. If she'd had the sway in their courts, she would've done it herself. But she wasn't stupid. She knew they'd think her Midgardian heritage beneath them, even with the Asgardian combined into her biology, like fine silk stitched unto rags.

"I will try." Thor turned to look at her as they finally reached the end of the Bifrost. "I believe that Odin will see them immediately."

"Don't let them lock her away," Casia told him, almost demanding it from him as if it were her place to do such a thing. The surprise on his face seemed to be telling of such. "I didn't leave everything behind to come here for nothing."

"I will do my best, Casia, you have my word."

When his gaze roamed over her expression, wondering if his words were enough, Casia gave him a nod for speech would not come to her beneath the heavy weight of his vision. A nod was unsatisfactory, but would have to do as she struggled against more than one force within herself.

-

-

Oh, how all the memories came rushing back to her.

The blood on her hands that melted into the chains at her wrists as it ran in streaking rivers upon her skin, covering the webbing black veins that ebbed with power. In the crowd, she saw faces. Faces of lost loved ones, loved ones she'd brought to finality, love turned to chaos in the blink of one's clouded eyes.

Chaos itself revelled and bowed to those faces as she passed by. Its shadow plated with gold of victory as it walked free while she was bound in chains that should not hold her.

Alas, she let them in knowledge that breaking free would cause more trouble than it was worth and land her in a position even worse than the bottom of the wolves pit she'd already found herself in.

It was as she was marched before the Allfather that Lusine Volkov decided she despised Asgard.

Though her tongue was coated in the tar of sin, the silver shone through as she bent at the waist, bowing before Odin. Like pushing her body onto a blade, the act pierced her, but the pain was necessary for the greater good. Knew it to be the honest option as she remembered the Captain waiting for her back on Earth.

How could she ever return to him if she were rotting in a cell?

"Princess Lusine Argent Volkov," Odin began, staff in hand, regarding her with his last remaining eye. Like staring into the barrel of Romanoff's gun, Lusine met his gaze. If he was surprised to see ocean blue, he did not show even a hint. "You have been convicted with conspiring treason and two counts of murder, both from your own family."

Lusine's expression did not change as she said, with vindication, "Pelia was no family of mine."

"Lady Pelia was the beloved wife of your brother," He replied with finality. Lusine bit her tongue between canines who knew the taste of blood better than wine. The sound of a howl in the distance turned her stomach over inside of her as Odin looked upon her with an eye of steel. "What challenge do you present to these claims?"

"I know with a full and heavy heart that you can detect the power that lives in turmoil within me. Do you see how it has locked itself in an eternal battle with my soul? One that it will not give up nor will it ever lose. It will never go away, but in my time on Midgard I learnt to control it, which is why no guards were harmed during my capture as they may have been in the past."

As if for emphasis, she stepped forward so that the chain links knocked together like a whisper of a reminder that, if she so much desired it, the chains could cease to exist.

"My crimes haunt me. They are the sins that leave me unable to sleep beneath the moon as I once did, but I was not in control. Those actions were not mine, nor were they conscious," Lusine swallowed, glancing down to her hands soaked in ichor, thick blood pooling around her, sticking between her toes, "all I ask for is forgiveness for the acts I could not prevent in my darkest hour."

"You are a danger to the universe," Odin responded, but even his  ancient, hardened face seemed to crack a little when her eyes shot up to meet his in complete and utter despair.

"My King, I wish that I could take it all back. I truly do. I was unpredictable and out of control, but now I am in control. No atrocities shall ever be commit by my hand again, of that I am certain." Down her cheek leaked a single tear. Packed with honestly, lacked the famous silver streak as it carved a raw line through her devastating expression.

"Should there ever be a day where a chaotic being shed a tear of genuine nature, we should take heed and trust her words for these days are few and far between," Odin uttered, the words the ring of a bell in the darkness, leading Lusine to new found hope by the most beautiful sound she'd ever had the pleasure of hearing. "I hereby declare you pardoned of your crimes against Asgard for the services I have been informed by my son that you pledged on Midgard when Loki posed a threat, against the expectations of most and the previous alliances between him and yourself."

"Thank you," Lusine managed to say, eternally thankful that she'd opted for the truth and not silver-lipped lies and magical suggestions towards release. Odin would have known if she'd attempted to influence him through her power and the rest of her life would have been spent locked away.

Lusine bowed deeply to him once more in gratitude for his mercy.

"Remove her chains," he commanded, gesturing with a wave of his hand that was nonchalant for such a significant event in Lusine's life as she was pardoned from the plague that had ruled her life for too long, "and show her to a temporary chambers before she departs for Remulan."

Lusine watched in a silent disbelief as the guards unfastened the shackles. Rubbed her wrists with steady hands, revelling in the freedom being granted to her once again when imprisonment had been within sight.

Skin soft beneath her fingertips as she held her hands together before herself, itching to bathe, longing for something that lay on the tip of her tongue and yet remained unnamed as she waited the snap back to reality from the dream cast upon her. And yet, the dream never faded away for it was the truth, though her heart tried its best to convince her otherwise.

As she passed by Loki awaiting his own hearing, she did not gloat as she knew her past self would have done with utter delight. Instead she offered a respectful nod of her head and went on her way, not taking a moment longer to think of the God of Mischief and Lies and the unfortunate fate that awaited him at the foot of Odin's throne.

-

2593 words
5.6.18