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There weren't many disadvantages to being the commander of the Valkyries, but the few Toni could think of were huge. And the most annoying was this monthly report thing, because seeing Odin from afar was already unpleasant enough, but talking to him… Well. Toni could imagine at least two dozen people she would rather talk to, and that included every single one of Odin’s horrifyingly boring advisors. Or Fandral.
“I think congratulations are in order.”
Toni was still busy imagining all the curses she had wanted to throw at Odin when the voice pulled her out of her thoughts. Before the sentence was even over, she was already grinning. She had just left the throne room and now turned to find Loki leaning against a column, watching Toni with disinterested interest - yes, that was a thing, and Loki had both invented and mastered it.
Coincidentally, she was very, very high up on the list of people Toni would rather talk to.
“Your Highness,“ Toni greeted the princess with a grin and a slight bow. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I was appointed head of the Valkyries five months ago. Your congratulation comes a little late.”
Loki raised a brow. “Everybody else would just have said thank you.”
“Yes, well. I’m not everybody else.”
“Thankfully, no,” Loki said. She came over to Toni, smirking now. “I have to admit that I’m a little surprised. I spent these last months waiting for Father to discharge you again.”
Hiding that Toni had spent the last months doing the very same, she mirrored Loki’s smirk. “Discharging me again would be a very great mistake.”
“Do you think so? Because I’ve heard of an explosion in your quarters -”
“That must have been a rumor. A lie. You know how it is.”
Loki watched her closely. “So you don’t experiment with weapons that haven’t been approved of by the King.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“A pity,” Loki said, and it was very obvious that she was trying to keep from grinning now. The disinterested interest was completely gone, replaced by obvious amusement. “I would have liked to watch.”
“Would you?”
“Yes, quite.”
“Oh. Alright, then - I don’t experiment at all, of course.”
“Of course.”
Toni smiled. “But if I would, I’d probably do it - at dusk?”
“Tomorrow?” Loki asked, inclining her head.
“Mh-hm.”
Loki considered that for a moment, then nodded. Then she sighed and threw a look into the direction of the throne room. “I’m afraid I have to go now. My dear Father demanded to see me.”
Toni winced in sympathy. “Does that have anything to do with that disaster in the kitchens yesterday?”
“Why would it have anything to do with that?” Loki asked and turned to go - but not without winking at Toni first.
Menace, Toni thought fondly, and left the palace.
“You don’t really think he’ll discharge me again, do you?”
Loki looked up from her book, frowning slightly. “Of course not. Actually, he is very pleased with you so far.”
“Well, he doesn’t show it.”
“He never does,” Loki said dryly. “Well, except if your name is Thor.”
Toni snorted at that. “Yes, right.”
They were in Toni’s quarters, in the small workshop she had set up for herself. Loki had started coming here regularly decades ago, long before Toni had become the leader of the Valkyries. They were friends - best friends, actually; had been ever since they had met each other at some boring feast when they had been children. The problem was this: as the princess, Loki had had the questionable pleasure of having a very protected childhood, and while that had never kept her from wreaking havoc in all of Asgard every other week, it might have kept her from being friends with the daughter of a peasant. (Toni still argued that her father had not actually been a peasant. He’d been so rich that the family was still considered low nobility, but tell that Odin.) So they had always kept it more or less a secret, and they still did. The slightly stilted conversations whenever they met at court were annoying, but Toni gladly endured them if it meant that it got her this.
Loki had her own nook in Toni’s workshop, and she often sat there with a book or doing some magic practice while Toni worked. And it was nice, seeing her like that - Toni knew that nobody else had ever been close enough to Loki for that, for this. Here, Loki didn’t wear her expensive dresses, just linen pants and simple tunics, and she kept her hair in a braid that almost reached her tailbone. And Toni -
Toni should really stop looking.
She turned back to her work. She was hurting in various places from today’s training, but she usually did, and it never kept her from doing her experiments. She liked tinkering around with things, even if it meant that she almost lost her hands every once in a while. Thankfully, Loki was quite adept at healing magic.
“Something is worrying you.”
Toni looked up again. “Hm?”
Loki was watching her, and now she even closed her book. “You’ve been quiet all evening.”
“Oh. Sorry, I just -”
“Don’t apologize. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Toni said, truthfully. Well, almost truthfully.
Loki did not seem convinced. “Nothing.”
“Well, sort of nothing.”
“So?”
Toni sighed and set down her tool, turning on her chair to face Loki properly. “So, we’ve got new recruits, right?”
Loki nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“Two of them have magic.”
Loki didn’t say anything for a moment, she just stared at Toni blankly. Then, “What are you going to do?”
Toni frowned. “Well, I’m not kicking them out.”
“Witches are not allowed to -”
“I know, ” Tony interrupted. “But that rule sucks, so - so I’m going to change it.”
A bit more of blank staring. “You cannot change it,” Loki said then.
“I’m the commander, of course I can.”
“Odin will not allow it.”
“He will.”
Loki’s eyes narrowed, and she looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be angry or impressed. “You are already planning something.”
“Yes. And I need your help.”
A few moments passed, then Loki sighed and let her book disappear into a pocket dimension. “Fine.”
“So you’ll help?”
“Of course I will help,” Loki said. “You always get into trouble without me.”
“Uh, I also always get into trouble when I’m with you.”
“But at least you are not alone, then.” Loki came over to sit on Toni’s bench, smiling. Her eyes were already sparkling; Loki loved scheming against her father. “Tell me about your plan.”
So Toni did, and all the while she hoped that Loki wouldn’t be too angry when she learned that Toni hadn’t told her everything.
Arranging an attack that could only be fought of with magic was easy. Granted, it was only because Loki was the best illusionist the Nine Realms had ever seen and Toni wouldn’t know what to do without her, but nevermind that. The effect would have been the same if it had been a real attack. The two recruits saved the day, Toni made sure to praise them just enough that they knew they had saved the day, and then she went to get criticized by Odin for at least half an hour.
It lasted a little more than forty-five minutes, in the end. Forty-five minutes Toni spent standing in front of the stairs that led up to the throne and hoping that she wouldn’t actually be discharged for this, because being discharged again would be very bad for her plan.
When Odin was done being old and cranky, Toni dropped her first bombshell : “I will not throw them out.”
Odin seemed unimpressed. “I just told you to do exactly that.”
“Yes, and - with all due respect - this is me telling you that I won’t.”
Toni ignored both the king’s frown and the muttering that rumbled through the listeners. The throne room wasn’t empty like it had been during Toni’s monthly reports - a few other Valkyrie were there and also some of the Einherjar, and there were also a handful of other advisors. The rest of the royal family was there as well; Thor stood right next to the throne he would soon inherit while Frigga and Loki watched from their places a few steps below the king.
“We all saw what almost happened today,” Toni said. “And when I say almost, I mean it - we were very lucky. But if we had more witches that know how to wield magic in battle, then we wouldn’t even have needed to be lucky. It would have taken just seconds to deal with the attack, and nobody at all would have been hurt.”
“The Valkyries are warriors,” Odin said. “Not witches.”
“And I think we should change that,” Toni said, pointing back at the two Valkyries who already were witches. “Actually, the change already happened. Having witches on the team means that we will be prepared for pretty much every imaginable threat, and I’m sorry if you disagree, Your Majesty, but I can’t see that as anything but an advantage.”
“She’s not wrong,” Thor chimed in, looking at his father. “Mother has always said -”
“They are untrained,” Odin interrupted. “Their use of magic is messy and uncoordinated, which makes them just as dangerous as those imaginary threats you are speaking of.”
“ Imaginable, father,” Loki corrected, very helpfully. It earned her a scolding look by Frigga, to which Loki not so silently replied, “I’m just trying to help, mother. His ears aren’t the best anymore.”
Toni had trouble to keep from grinning. “They need a teacher,” she said to Odin. “Nothing more. They still are at the beginning of their training, anyway. With additional lessons in magic, they will stop being dangerous within months.”
“And who shall train them? My wife has much more important things to do, just as every witch in her coven.”
Lo and behold, the second bombshell: “What about your daughter, then?”
What followed was a very, very long discussion. And after that discussion followed another discussion, and another, until there was nothing left to discuss anymore and everyone was even more annoyed than they had been in the beginning of this. And still, everything had worked out exactly as Toni had planned, and she felt very satisfied with herself.
Until Loki came to her quarters in the evening, at least.
The princess was even paler than usual as she used magic to change into more comfortable clothes, and when she sat down on one of the benches in the workshop she actually looked like she might be about to faint.
“I spoke to those girls,” she said.
“Oh?” Toni carefully sat down next to her friend.
“They said…” Loki frowned, turning her head to look at Toni. “They said that you specifically chose them. And I can’t help but wonder -”
“Yes, I knew,” Toni said, deciding to shorten all of this a little.
Loki stared at her. “You knew that they had magic.”
“Yes.”
“And you still let them be -”
“Sure did.”
“You knew this would happen. You planned this. From the very start, you planned this.”
“Yes. Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Loki said flatly. “I’m impressed.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Loki studied Toni’s face. “Though I am unsure why you did it.”
Toni blinked. She’d thought that was actually quite easy to understand. “You’ve always wanted to be a Valkyrie.”
Loki looked at her like she thought that Toni had lost her mind. “Toni, that was - ages ago. We were children.”
“Yeah, fine, so you stopped talking about it. But that doesn’t mean that you stopped thinking about it, which - you didn’t.” Toni shook her head. “I know you didn’t. You look at me all the time, especially when you watch us train, and you always get that sort of - that look on your face, like you want something you can’t have. And I know Odin would never have allowed you to become a, well, a normal Valkyrie, because you’re the princess and also a witch, so I thought - I just had to become commander and make the Valkyries witches, right? And they’d need a teacher. And you’re the best witch everyone has ever seen and everybody knows that you can fight, so you’re - you’re the obvious choice.”
Loki’s mouth had actually fallen open. She stayed silent for several long moments. “You really are an exceptionally good friend,” she said then, her voice soft, “but you are also rather stupid.”
Toni frowned and looked at her friend. “What?”
“I have not been wanting to be a Valkyrie,” Loki told him very slowly, as if she was scared that Toni might not understand otherwise. “I have been wanting to be yours. ”
Toni didn’t understand that. She really didn’t, for what felt like a few minutes, and then she suddenly did , and somehow she really felt exceptionally stupid then. “Wait. Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Oh. Oh. That’s - huh. ”
“Yes, quite. That doesn’t mean that I’m not thankful, mind you. I look forward to training the Valkyries with you, and if it saves me from being married off to some oh so handsome lord, thank the Norns.” She smiled. “Or thank you , rather.”
Toni felt a little dizzy. “Yes. Right. So, give me a second, are you really - you really want -”
Suddenly, Loki seemed uncertain. “Please don’t feel pressured. I’m more than content with what we have, especially when we can spend more time with each other know. Also I know that you have had male lovers in the past, so if you are simply not inclined, then -”
Toni interrupted her with a kiss, which worked really well. As far as kisses went, it was brief and unspectacular, but the look on Loki’s face when Toni pulled back again was perfection.
“Oh,” she said softly, blushing a little. “Well.”
“Yes,” Toni agreed and pulled Loki into a hug. “ Loki.”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Just - I kind of -” Toni buried her face in Loki’s shoulder, relaxing a little when Loki wrapped her arms around Toni to pull her closer. “I love you, you know.”
Loki made a very pleased sound. She pressed her lips against Toni’s temple. “And I love you, too.” She sighed. “If I had known that you felt the same, I would have done this much sooner. Then again, I already thought I was being obvious enough. How daft are you?”
“Just shut up, Loki.”