Chapter Text
He hadn’t meant for this to happen.
What remains of the Alfather drifts away on the breeze, as if he'd never been a man at all.
…
He hadn’t lied. When Odin had said he loved the both of them, he hadn’t been lying.
There’s a lump of conflicting feelings, of anger, and confusion, and surely misplaced grief tangling itself into a knot within his throat. Tears swelling to his waterline. Loki digs his nails into his hands--a plea that the water blurring his vision will go no further onto his face.
That man was not his father.
Waves crash against the cliff. The world is still for a moment, as ozone fills the air. Thor’s glare is heavy, as if the water below had personally taken his father from him. As though it was the sea's fault. Lightning bounds around his fists in small arcs, hissing as it returns to Thor's fist.
Loki knows not if they are brothers. But Loki has faced many variations of Thor’s wrath before--unfortunately enough, and he knows the damage it tends to drag with it. Anger made Thor irrational and brutish in every sense of the word. Now was certainly not a time for belligerent blindness. Asgard needed its princes.
“ Brother .” Thor is silent for a moment too long. Still, and stiff as the veins in his throat pulsate.
“This was your doing.” Suddenly, his attempt at offering comfort is washed away with the urge to bite back.
“You know well that this was not my intention.” It hadn’t been. Couldn’t have been. As much as he'd loathed him, he couldn't have thought of killing him… of a world without the Alfather.
However misplaced he had been, he'd put Odin in that home for the good of Asgard--if not his own good. He hadn't wanted him dead , delirious or not. A man who had everything but his wits about him was a threat to the people of Asgard when in power. And…and Loki hadn't…
He wasn't meant to die .
Rage has always had a way of blinding Thor to common sense, and when he steps towards him, Mjølnir raised, Loki has enough experience to know what Thor intends. And that whatever his silver tongue spells out will do little to stop it.
Loki's hands rise up into a poor form of peacemaking, stumbling blindly backwards as though there’s no cliff ledge.
Loki makes it almost all of five feet away from his would-be assailant, bravely soaking the trousers of his disguise with dew before something seems to…to change. The wind whips up in the air, mist soaked curls sticking to Loki’s forehead as the smell of rot invades his senses. Loki stops, head turning towards the all too recognizable sound of air tearing in two. He stumbles a short step towards Thor.
…
He’d thought the Alfather deluded, as awful as it was. Their mother had never mentioned another child. Hadn’t so much as suggested it, and then a man who’d rapidly declined after the passing of his wife brought the idea into air. Not that the Alfather hadn’t lied before--but an illegitimate child from a man who had been so devoted to their mother seemed near impossible. The deluded musings of a man who cared not for casualties.
The portal reeks of worse than rot. Of death, and ashes as the darkness sprawls into it’s full size. His suit and tie slip off his shoulders like oil, replaced with proper clothes as Thor strikes himself with lightning. Loki does his best to pretend the thunder following doesn’t pop his ears.
…
He hadn’t believed Odin. Had thought wiser of there being an unrecorded Odinson--er…Odindottir locked away somewhere. When he had still been intent on maintaining their illusion of a family, he'd told them how the norns had saw fit to only bless him with wonderful sons--even when Loki had taken up the mantle of their daughter from time to time, the Alfather had hesitated to refer to them as such. Odin had no daughters, none that hadn’t been born from the delirium of old age.
Still, the woman that stumbles out of the portal is real. Unstable on her feet, and wearing a ratty excuse of armor, but real nonetheless.
The supposed goddess of death stumbles on the weedy terrain, catching her balance a few feet from the rapidly dissolving portal. Hela--if that’s who she is, staggers forward a few feet before she stops short. Looking between the two of them as if insulted.
“So, he’s gone.” The woman clucks her tongue, leveling Loki with a pointed stare. He’s not sure what he’s done to gain her attention, but he’s not keen on keeping it. “I would have liked to see that.” Loki unconsciously drifts closer to Thor as his hand clamps around Mjølnir once more. It’s a force of habit--really. Moving to hide behind Thor, but if Thor wants someone to take his anger out on, Loki would rather it be her than him.
“You must be Hela.” The woman raises her eyebrows, gesturing as if it's obvious. “I’m Thor--Thor Odinson.”
“ Really ? You don’t look like him.” Somehow, she manages to convey her total lack of disinterest with an eyebrow movement. He can feel the rage radiating off Thor in waves. Either Thor has improved on non-verbal communication, or somehow this woman is speaking into his mind. Either way, it’s visibly angering him further. Now is not a good time for either of them to be blinded by rage. Especially not the hammer wielding maniac with a violent streak.
Thor’s jaw works in the heavy silence between them, an obvious warning that he’s about to do something stupid. Thor shifts his weight, hands twitching around his hammer as though considering the utter stupidity of rushing a woman the Alfather had claimed to hold back with his very life. Somehow, over the course of the short, awkward moments between the three of them, Loki had drifted close enough to Thor to take a mostly obscured grip on his upper arm. Thor’s supposed elder sister is too close to talk reason into him without being overheard--still, Loki tries to convey a message of ‘don’t you dare,’ with his fingernails alone. Before Thor can open his mouth, and start some sort of battle upon the shoreside of Midgard, Loki knows that diplomatically speaking, it’s best to try and come to some sort of agreement first. To at least attempt to smother the fight for a throne before it begins.
“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement?” Hela’s mouth opens, as though she had not been expecting an olive branch of any kind, face scrunching up as she absorbs it. Loki knows that his offer is liable to fall to its own futility. That if she was truly here to do what the Alfather had claimed, a pact born of words will do nothing to stop it.
“Perhaps we could.” Loki suppresses the urge to blink. Thor does not. That was…unexpected to say the very least. And utterly opposite of the trend his luck had established over the last century. Hela’s face tightens for a moment, as though she’s trying to catch a thought. “I was under the impression that we were going to fight to the death, but I’m… amenable. ”
“I presume you have demands?” Likely ones that were utterly inequitable. He knew better than to hope for a fair division of whatever the Alfather had left behind--if any, but her mere existence certainly didn't bode well for the distribution process.
“I wouldn't call them demands. ” Hela glances at her nails for a moment, acting unconvincingly disinterested. “I know what I'm owed.” Absolutely nothing, as far as Loki was concerned. A so-called Odinsdottir arriving out of the blue at the Alfather's passing--a threat that the Alfather had claimed to hold back with his life, yet never mentioned, has no claim to the throne of Asgard. Deserves no blessings from Asgard's halls for mere existence .
“ Owed , are you?”
“ Loki .” Somehow, Thor manages to make his name sound like a sigh. “We can discuss exactly what is owed to whom after this…settles in. In the morning, perhaps?” Loki thinks to lean into Thor's ear, and tell him exactly how horrid of an idea it is to consider anything of the sort. He couldn't honestly be stupid enough to bring her all the way to Asgard .
“ Thor -” Hela hums, effectively cutting him off, as though Thor wasn't bound to ignore him anyway.
“It is better to discuss these matters…elsewhere.” Of course this supposed Odinsdottir arrives just to support Thor's stupidest idea of the day. Wonderful.
“To Asgard, then.”
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It doesn’t escape Loki’s attentive eye that Hela’s armor knits itself together, surely and quickly as she steps through the lip of the Bifrost. That the tension she holds in her body eases as she takes a deep breath of Asgardian air.
He had known it was a bad idea before Thor had spat out the call for Heimdall. Still, the betterment of her body--of her very clothing upon entering the land proved the Alfather’s claims correct, did it not? That in Thor’s surprising lack of violence--in this idiotic olive branch being offered to death incarnate, they’d gone against a dying man's last wishes, and brought a weasel into a rabbit warren.
Loki’s mind is pulled in many ways. Whether to watch this chaos unfold and leave later--to leave now and escape the utter doom of their people--or to trust in the time tested truth that Thor will not rest without victory.
…
He doesn’t feel much like fighting, not when death might be within the brush of his fingers. Regardless of how he feels for the people of Asgard, or Thor--how he feels for himself, there’s a raw part of him that does not belong that, truly, doesn’t see much fault in laying down for the short fall of an ax. Of resting in Helheim or the void inbetween. What point is there in running from something Loki had chased?
Loki is tired. An exhaustion has been seeping into his bones long before he impersonated the Alfather, and today has worn him far past thin.
Thor's hand brushes Loki's shoulder, as though momentarily forgetting he has no need to be chivalrous. Clearly the insistence of familiarity from Skurge was quite the distraction. Regardless, Loki manages to escape the all too un-enthralling conversation erupting from Thor's ever interrupting friends, right down the stairs and close enough to the exit to decide between disappearing on his own, and motioning for Thor to hurry up already.
Judging by the crowd, Loki will be waiting.
Hela spares Skurge, and Thor's personal flock nothing more than a passing glance, jerking away from Thor's offered hand on her way down, stopping just short of the lip of the bridge.
Thor's supposed sibling somehow misses the crowd entirely, looking upon the city of Asgard's gilded towers with an undeniably reverent expression. Breath baited, with eyes the size of a particularly small man's saucers as she looks out at the city she had supposedly been born to.
Truly, Loki can't help but judge her. This “Hela” woman has brought herself well within scrutinizing distance of his person, unknowingly or not, and that left him well within his rights to give her a proper once over.
She's…a good deal younger in appearance than he would imagine someone older than Thor to look. Surprisingly wrinkless, despite the skin damage she'd received from whatever windy place she'd come from. Then again, perhaps a goddess of death could stop cell death.
It'd be a funny thing, if she could prevent her own aging, but fail to do so much as bathe. Then again, if he had been left to the supposed wilds of Helheim, he wouldn’t be keen to strip down and bathe either. Perhaps, against his better judgment, under all that filth, and greasy hair, she did share some…facial similarities with the Alfather. Not enough to guarantee parentage, by any means, but enough to produce a little spore of doubt. Loki wouldn't count it. If they were wise , they wouldn't allow any sort of unnamed heir arriving out of nowhere after Odin's death, regardless of if they shared noses, or postures. Even though Odin had…admitted to her existence despite history's suggestion of the otherwise, they'd be smart to doubt. When Loki had left the Alfather on that planet, he had been very susceptible. Out of his wits, and truly--it had been very recently proven just how easy it was to imitate Odin.
Then again, Loki was not an heir to Asgard. This was not his problem to be wise about. Not anymore. Even if the Alfather had hesitated and left them with the claim that there had been love that was never shown, Asgard was not technically his issue anymore.
“Your mother never told you staring was rude?” Loki can hardly help from clicking his tongue.
“Of course , and yours was…competent with you, was she?” When Hela spares him so much as a glance from her forlorn staring competition, she almost appears unbothered. It seems she’s not skilled at controlling her expression.
“My father certainly taught me better than to arrive at someone's deathbed in my pajamas .”
“Marked it on your calendar, did you?” He’s almost glad that gets a bit of a rise out of her. With a huff, and a surprisingly childish roll of her eyes, Hela stalks off away from him. Loki watches as she descends into a crowded street of naive Asgardians, barely offering a motion for Thor to follow before following after her. By the time that he’s managed to catch up to her, there’s a small crowd that had gathered, likely all too invested in the Great Thor’s return. Murmurs of confusion, and discontent are near audible as the three of them--and unfortunately Skurge, descend the stairs from the observatory. Although Thor manages to catch up to their pace as Hela glides to some sort of a stop, it’s not the known and beloved son of Asgard that takes it upon themself to address the crowd.
“The Alfather is dead .” There’s a silence growing throughout the crowd as her words settle, the authoritative tone seemingly drawing their sole attention for once. “There is no body, and there will be no boat. We will hold an end of life celebration on a date yet to be announced, but for now we must undergo our own mourning. Please , no questions in these trying times, we’ve lost a father, and a wonderful king.” For a moment, Loki sincerely wonders if she’s practiced this speech of hers. It’s obvious--at least this close up, that she doesn’t mean a word of the “mourning daughter act” that she had slipped into--but truly, it’s convincing for a lie. Even so, it’s respectable in a way; that she’d come prepared for her supposed parents death. Incidentally announcing herself as a previously undocumented heir to the throne however, he found much less so.
Regardless, the three of them--and the eyes of a kingdom’s worth of people--cut through the crowd of citizens behind Hela.
At least if they managed to get inside, they’d be partially spared all of these prying eyes.
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The halls click under their heels as he attempts to keep up with the pair of them. Apparently agility, and oddly long legs was something in their family that Thor had simply failed to inherit. He’s winded by the time they arrive in the throne room, even though he’s well aware he has no reason to be. It’s…Thor was tired. An odd, cold exhaustion had slowly seeped into his mind and body until his anger had dissipated near entirely. It had been an up and down day, and it was…far from sinking in yet. Perhaps worse, he’d found yet another cellars worth of secrets buried under the ones he had already needed to uproot their family tree to find.
And now he was tired. Mjølnir was buzzing, and humming restlessly in his grasp, and Thor was winded on a walk he used to take daily.
Hela stands in the center of the throne room, under his younger siblings judging eye as she glares at the mural of their family. It’d never been a particularly…flattering painting, but regardless Thor sincerely doubts that his immortalized painting form having a unibrow--or Loki’s having the forehead of a…much poorer hairlined man--was the source of her ire.
“So he went and married her.” It’s certainly not the…best picture of their mother, but it was a beautiful one. It nearly did her justice, even. For some…strange reason, despite his mental exhaustion Thor finds that he can’t help but share.
“That’s our mother. Frigga.” Hela looks at him, as though he’s truly stupid. Loki doesn’t find it in his heart to be much kinder.
“Yes, I’m…more than aware.” Ah.
For a few moments, the three of them find much more interesting pieces of furniture to look at. Anything but awkward, uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, and someone who used to be anything but.
…
“I suppose you’ll need a change of clothes, then?” It’s almost a blessing in disguise when Loki interrupts, even if it is , once again just to draw attention to the obvious. And, more likely--cause trouble somehow. “I just don’t know where we’ll get them on such a notice.” He shouldn’t have expected him to be doing anything but stirring the pot of turmoil between the three of them. Still, there’s an obvious solution in sight, that will surely provide some form of comeuppance.
“You’re right, little brother. She’ll have to borrow one of yours.” The twitch in Loki’s face is near unnoticeable, but--amusingly, still there. Thor, as tired as he is, tries to school himself into some form of hapless expression. “We’ve just got no other options. Surely you won’t mind.” Thor is sure he would. Even beyond the small twitches in his face, Loki had been famously possessive of his belongings--fine fabrics especially.
“I’m….sure we can find something else.” Loki spares Hela--who, truly, is clearly more interested in the throne room itself--a grin almost befitting a prince of Asgard. Or a poor liar. “Besides--I wouldn’t want a…a lady such as herself to be left to ill-fitting clothes.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. We’ve had a very long day, after all.” The aggravation on his face almost cheers him up. Almost.
“ Thor --I…” Loki huffs an irritated breath, managing to almost appear as though he’s never been anything but cordial. “ I am--I am going to go find a servant to help us with our…. hospitality issues. Wouldn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable .”
“Truly, brother, your generosity knows no bounds.”
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