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There was only a split second to think well, that was foolish before the first slam of his body cracked cement. The green creature shook him like a dog shaking a rat to snap its neck. It all happened too fast for him to absorb what was happening until it was over and the pain hit him like a shockwave.
The only sound he could find the air to make was a thin whine. He thought the beast might have said something, but the ringing in his ears kept Loki from hearing it. His entire body throbbed hard enough that it was hard to tell how bad the damage was, but he thought his hip might be out of joint, one wrist felt broken, and he didn’t want to think too hard about the condition of his ribs. Loki tried to move his head and pain exploded behind his eyes. He lifted his better hand slowly and probed cautiously at the back of his skull. He could feel blood but no softness. Not fractured, he thought with relief. Just bruised, though that could be just as bad.
It is over, he realized, slowly, staring at Stark’s ceiling. Even if the Chitauri won, his state would make it easy for them to take the Tesseract back to Thanos and leave him here, defenseless. And he did not think the Chitauri were going to win.
Breathing shallowly, Loki started to roll to his side.
Pain ripped through his middle and a howl exploded from his lips. He fell back, panting, his pulse thrumming. Wrong. Something wrong. He moved his good hand, slowly, and made himself press down on his abdomen. Almost immediately, his vision went white and he jerked his hand back, swallowing down the nausea of pain.
“Oh,” he said, a little thickly and to no one. “Oh, that’s good.”
He needed to get out of here. Get away. He still had friends on Alfheim, maybe, that might be able to offer healing. This time when he rolled to his side he was ready, teeth gritted against the pain, forcing himself to crawl out of the hole his body had left. His head started spinning before he got far, pain throbbing at the back of his skull, humming down his spine. The hot, throbbing agony in his core only seemed to get worse.
Just stop a moment, Loki thought, panting, resting his head on one of the stairs and closing his eyes. Just...a moment.
Voices. Buzzing somewhere nearby. Buzzing - the Chitauri? No, that was more like clicking. Loki focused on forcing his eyes open, but his vision took what seemed like a long time to clear. He realized, gradually, that he must have lost consciousness during his short ‘rest.’ Damn, he thought, but dully.
“Is he dead?” His hawk’s voice, harsh. No, Loki thought, but he could not quite connect his brain to his mouth. He needed to turn over. He ought to at least meet his enemies’ eyes. Die somewhat less of an ignoble death.
He steeled himself and rolled to his back, holding back any sound but a very faint gasp. He looked up at them and wanted to laugh. Loki focused his eyes on Thor’s stony face, because it was easier. “I think,” he started to say, but he couldn’t hold onto what he’d meant to say, and he hurt.
“Therefore you are,” Stark said, inexplicably. “Something to say? Spit it out.”
Something’s wrong, he thought. I’m hurt. He could taste blood on his tongue but maybe he’d just bitten it. He hoped. The Widow started to frown. “His eyes aren’t focusing,” she said. “Could be a concussion.”
Thor moved forward, dropping down and Loki shrank back without thinking. Thor took his chin anyway, though, peering into his eyes. Loki tried to pull away, but it was getting harder and harder to-
The rest of the thought was gone. His middle throbbed with agony. Thor shook his head, looking aggrieved, as though this - Loki - were a great trial to him. “Come, Loki,” he said, and he realized too late what Thor meant to do as he gripped Loki’s shoulders and moved to haul him up.
“No,” Loki gasped, too late. He heard his own short, sharp cry, then nothing for a glorious split second.
Buzzing again. It sounded more urgent this time. He opened his eyes foggily and found Thor peering at him. He looked almost worried. He opened his mouth to say so, only to break off when Thor’s fingers probed the knot at the back of his head in favor of a faint distressed sound. “Banner,” he heard someone saying. “Ban-ner. No, you did good, fella, but now we need…”
Thor set his head gently back down and moved, unfastening his tunic, and Loki hissed in a breath as his knuckles brushed his chest and within a couple hours he could imagine the rainbow of colors his skin would be. But Thor kept working, mouth a grim line as he moved a hand down under Loki’s ribs. “Don’t,” Loki tried to protest, but Thor ignored him. He didn’t press, at least. His fingers felt very cold on Loki’s skin, and when he glanced down he was almost morbidly fascinated by the pattern of purple bruising. It hardly looked like skin. Like grapes in a wine press, he thought morbidly.
“Loki,” Thor said. His voice sounded oddly muffled. “Do you understand what is going on?”
He focused for several moments on getting his tongue to work. “Yes.” Easy enough to understand now. So many relatively fragile, squishy things in a body. The kinds of things that wouldn’t take high velocity contact with concrete well. He wondered how quickly he was bleeding dry. Couldn’t take more than an hour. He felt curiously calm at the prospect.
“Loki,” Thor said again. Now he sounded too close, and Loki realized he’d closed his eyes. He prized them back open. “I am going to get you help.”
Loki turned his head and retched a small pool of blood onto the floor. Thor wiped his mouth clean with peculiar gentleness, and Loki thought of course, this is how I am loved, as I die. Helpless, at his mercy. He could not quite summon the bitterness that ought to come along with that thought.
“Stark,” he heard Thor say. Far away, once again. “Make haste.”
He blinked sluggishly, the world wavering out and then in again. His head pounded hollowly, and his eyes met the Captain’s, who was frowning. Loki smiled at him, which just made him frown more. “Hold on,” he said oddly. I already let go, Loki wanted to tell him, but his mouth was dry and he couldn’t figure out how to make his tongue work. He could see his hawk over the Captain’s shoulder, watching. More like a vulture than a hawk, he thought dizzily.
How much longer?
His eyelids felt weighted, dragging closed. “Thor? Bruce!” Loki heard the Captain exclaim, and glimpsed him lurching toward him before he sank like a stone into deep water, pain flaring hot and then fading.
Mjolnir pressed down on his chest so he struggled to breathe, gradually compressing his ribs until he felt them start to give. He struggled, tried to writhe out from under it, but it was immovable as a mountain.
“Unworthy,” Thor’s voice intoned like a sentence. Loki could hear him prowling behind him, out of sight, and fear zinged up his spine, sudden unreasoning terror. You wretch. You coward. The Nine reject you with one voice.”
A deep seated pain throbbed in his stomach, lower than Mjolnir’s crushing weight. Thor prowled closer and Loki whimpered, but it wasn’t Thor at all. A golden-maned dragon bared its needle teeth at him as it moved sinuously nearer, exhaling hot breath on Loki’s face. “Get up, Loki. Show some pride.” It spoke in Thor’s voice, deep and strange.
Loki shoved at Mjolnir again. “I can’t,” he said.
The dragon that was also Thor laughed. “Whose fault is that?” Loki felt sick. He strained but there was no give, his body felt so heavy…
“I can’t tell where it’s coming from - Thor, move,” said a heron to his left. Its beak stabbed down and Loki inhaled sharply at the sharp pain that spidered out from where it pierced above his navel. He made a thin sound through his nose, but Mjolnir only seemed to be getting heavier. The dragon’s teeth were inches from his face, its breath sweet like rotting flowers.
“Poor little Loki,” it purred, no longer sounding so much like Thor. “Pathetic. You aren’t worthy of the gift of death. It is a good thing I can make use of you.” The dragon grew, golden mane darkening to purple, rearing up, and Loki moaned, pain and fear rolling through him in waves.
“No,” he said, fragile, weak. Everything was starting to blur like dye running in the rain, and there was something underneath, an ugly truth he needed to reach.
“This is more than I can handle,” said the heron, who wasn’t a heron anymore.
“Bruce,” said a different voice, sounding uneasy. “His eyes are open.”
He needed to tell them about Mjolnir and how he couldn’t breathe right. But he was so tired. Maybe it could wait.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Bruce, who might or might not be the same as the heron.
I am scared, Loki wanted to say, but he couldn’t make his tongue work, and his body sung with sweet, vicious agony. The dragon bent its head over him and unhinged its jaw. “Time’s up, little Loki,” it said. He stared helplessly into the black void of its gullet as it stretched out to swallow him whole.
The first face he saw, bobbing back to the surface, was Thor’s. Relief swept across his features, and Loki closed his eyes again so he didn’t have to look at it. The lingering dull ache in every corner of his body informed him that he still lived.
He could not quite decide how he felt about that.
Thor pulled back and turned to bellow over his shoulder, “he’s awake!” before turning back to Loki. “Brother - do you need anything?”
Water, Loki tried to say, but it came out as an unintelligible rasp. “Of course,” Thor said, and ducked away for a moment, returning with a cup of ice. He would have taken it, but Loki still felt kitten weak and so had to submit to Thor feeding him one of the cubes like a child. Taking in more of his surroundings, he recognized the look of a private healing room on Asgard.
So he’d missed that, then. The Tesseract was not a gentle means of travel. He wondered how badly off he had been, how close to the edge he’d scraped this time, and still come away.
Thor seemed to be waiting for something. “What do you want,” Loki rasped. Thor gave him another ice cube.
“I thought you lost,” he said.
“So you’ve said.” Loki sucked on the ice, loathe to admit how good the slow trickle of cold water felt down his throat.
“I do not mean...I mean just now. When you were...you were sorely injured by the Hulk.”
“You do not need to tell me that,” Loki mumbled. “I was there.”
Thor shook his head. “I did not think - if we had come but a bit later, or if we had locked you away without realizing-”
Loki contemplated that for a moment, bleeding to death in agony in a cell somewhere. For a brief flicker of a moment he was glad that it hadn’t come to that. He didn’t know yet if he was glad about this, though. “What of it,” he said flatly.
Thor’s stare was intense, earnest. “It reminded me how it was, when I believed you were lost to me. I cannot make myself not your brother. I cannot erase the love I feel for you. And I do not wish to.” Thor reached out, and Loki flinched away; miracle of miracles, he actually pulled back. “I will not rest until I have found a means to mend what is wrong between us.”
How much would he have given to hear those words a year ago, or two? Loki closed his eyes. Too late.
The door opened and Loki turned toward it, desperate for something that was not Thor. Only to falter, because it was Frigga. “Loki,” she said, with a small smile, as though she was welcoming him home as a prodigal son and not a traitor. He tried to close his face, but he feared he was too weak, and anyway she had always been able to see through him better than most.
“Have I made you proud,” he asked, taking advantage of the rasp in his voice to make it harsh. Her smile only flickered slightly.
“No,” she said, and he wanted to flinch. “But I am glad to see you home and healing, nonetheless.” Healing, Loki thought. As though that were possible, when he was the disease, when his very being was an infection.
“That will change,” he said darkly.
“I do not think it will.”
(A vague memory flickered into his mind - not an old one, something new - Frigga’s arms around him, humming as he whimpered, half in and half out of some shadow nightmare. He wondered with a chill what she had seen there.)
That should not have been his concern, however, as became plain a moment later.
“My son.”
Loki’s still healing insides froze and for an interminable moment his lungs locked, refusing to either inflate or deflate. He was briefly certain he was going to vomit, even if there was nothing in his system but a couple of melted ice cubes. He forced himself to look toward the door, to look at the Allfather standing there (bent, had he always been so bent). And old, older than Loki remembered seeing him in that last frozen image, fading away above.
Odin took a step forward and Loki shrank away even as he tried to arrange his face into something, a sneer, a snarl, anything (tried to breathe). “No,” he rasped. “No, not you. If I - if I must I will tolerate-”
“It is not your choice,” Odin said, and his voice held all the warmth of a Jotunheim winter. (My son, he had said. Loki’s mind picked at those words, frantic as a nest of wasps. What did he mean, Loki knew what he was and it was not that.) “Frigga, Thor - will you leave us?”
Thor opened his mouth, perhaps to object (had he learned nothing?) but Frigga’s hand on his arm forestalled him, and she shook his head. Loki saw her looking at the Allfather, however, and something passed between them briefly before she looked back at Loki. He tensed, but all she said was, “I will return soon.”
Loki turned his head away and looked at the wall, refusing to answer. He drew away from Thor’s hand as well, waiting for the door to close quietly behind them both. Leaving him alone with Odin.
His heart fluttered like a rabbit’s, more frightened here than he had been while dying. “Are you to condemn me now?” He made himself ask, not looking at the man he’d once called Father. “I would have expected you to wait until it could make a spectacle.”
“I am not here to condemn you.” The Allfather did not speak loudly, but his voice felt loud, as it always had. “We need to talk. It is overdue.”
Loki twisted his mouth into a sneer, still staring at the wall. “Is it. And what is this talk to be about? Are you planning to lecture me on unworthiness?”
“No.”
The simplicity of the answer jarred Loki, and for a moment he scrabbled for a response. “No?” He managed. “That is all you have to-”
“I am not here to discuss what you have done. That can wait.” He heard steps across the room and Odin sat down. Loki felt his breathing quicken, though he couldn’t have said what he feared, not exactly.
“I do not see that there is anything else to discuss,” Loki said finally, strained. His chest was starting to ache. Odin said nothing, and he shifted, disconcerted. “What do you want,” he said, but instead of sounding defiant it came out plaintive.
“Nothing else?” The Allfather said coldly. “You cannot think of anything else I should know?”
Loki’s tongue darted out. His lips felt dry, still, but he would not ask for anything from the Allfather.
“Very well,” Odin said. His voice was still cool. “Since you have not asked, I will tell you how you came here. The mortals were able to hold you back from death but did not have the means to heal you. Your brother-”
“He is not my brother,” Loki said, but it sounded weak.
“Your brother,” Odin repeated, “used the Tesseract to bring you here in haste. You were brought to the Healing Halls for tending by Eir.” Odin paused. “Is there still nothing you would say?”
Loki tried to think. There was some point to this - Odin said nothing without purpose. But he could not think what it was.
“Nothing? I will go on.” Odin leaned forward, and Loki found his eyes drawn reluctantly toward his face, his piercing stare. “Eir examined you, to determine the severity of your wounds, which were indeed dire. A difference of an hour, she said, and you might have died.”
And I am sure you would have grieved then, a part of Loki wanted to sneer, but something held him back. Unease was growing, a sense that there was a wave rising on the horizon he did not want to examine.
“Still nothing?” Odin barely paused for a breath. “As Eir worked, however, she noticed something strange. She asked Thor about the events on Midgard, and he confirmed that you were there only three days, there was only one true battle and that, while the mortals had imprisoned you, they did not touch you.”
Oh, Loki thought weakly.
“Eir wondered, therefore,” Odin said, his voice terribly quiet, “why it was that your body showed evidence of previous injury. Repeated fractures. Joint strains. Scars she did not recognize.” Loki blanked his gaze, though he knew his breathing, shallow and quick, must give him away. “The remains of a brand on your shoulder.”
Loki stayed silent. The only sound was his breathing, though that seemed unbearably loud.
“Is there anything that you would like to say now, Loki?” Odin asked. It sounded almost gentle, but fear hummed across Loki’s nerves like a bow over strings. Why are you doing this to me, he wanted to demand, but held it back.
“No,” he managed to say. It came out thin, strained.
“Shall I tell you what I think, then?” Loki said nothing, and Odin went on. “I have been considering. Since Eir told me all of this. Firstly - it seems clear that what she saw was not received on Midgard. And I know that before you fell, you were not so badly wounded. So these injuries must have been received somewhere in the year between the day we lost you and the day you reappeared on Midgard.”
“You did not lose me,” Loki managed. His voice shook. “I did not fall.”
“No,” Odin agreed after a moment. “You let go.” Loki twitched violently, but Odin went on, merciless. “I have wondered, since we knew you lived, whether you knew something I did not, about the Void. Did you?” Loki swallowed hard and said nothing. “Are there further corrections you would make?” he asked, and Loki said nothing to that, either.
“That offered me a time, and a place, at least in the loosest sense. But then the question - how? Perhaps in the fall? But Eir answered that question promptly enough.” Loki dragged his gaze away. “She informed me that your wounds were consistent with some form of torture.”
Loki sucked in a breath. “What did you expect?” The words came out suddenly savage. “Did you think that I was - enjoying myself? The Void was not kind, but I survived.” He summoned a sneer. “You expect me to believe you knew none of this? All-seeing Heimdall-”
“There are places even he cannot see,” Odin interrupted. “But please, Loki, tell me of these things you think I should have known.”
Loki clamped his jaw shut and stared straight ahead. I would rather die a traitor than a traitor and a coward.
“Loki, my son,” Odin said, and Loki shuddered at those words, again. “Tell me what you have seen.”
Loki forced a strained, stuttering laugh. “You cannot ask me to damn myself,” he said flatly. “I will not. I will die in silence.”
Something flashed across Odin’s face out of the corner of his eye, like pain. “What is it you think will damn you?” Loki closed his jaw more tightly. “My son-”
“I am not your son,” Loki said fiercely. Odin was quiet for a moment.
“Yet I am still your father,” he said. When Loki looked at him there was an odd expression on his face. Tired, Loki thought.
“A nice claim to make,” Loki fired back. “You simply want to know if I sold Asgard’s secrets to my allies-”
“Your allies?” Odin’s voice rose, and Loki flinched back, alarmed. “Say the truth, Loki - your torturers. I ask again - who hurt you?”
Who hurt you. Like he cares. But at the same time, some other part of him thought he can only kill you once. What does it matter? He could feel himself shaking. “You know the name,” he said, baring his teeth. “You simply want me to confirm it. You want me to confess the depth of my own treason, that I betrayed not just Asgard but all the Nine.”
That odd flicker again. Odin’s hand snapped out and forced Loki’s head to turn, their eyes to meet. Fear, Loki thought, and wanted to laugh. Yes. We should all be afraid. “Betrayed to whom?”
Loki tried to laugh, but it hurt. He bared his teeth instead. “The Titan,” he said hoarsely. “Death’s Lover. Scourge of the Nine Realms.” He let his head fall back. “There, Allfather. Are you pleased?”
Odin let go of his chin and fell back heavily. His face had gone pale, and his eyes closed for a moment, and the savage satisfaction Loki had briefly felt flickered away. “Thanos,” he said, and the name was like a chill down Loki’s spine. “It was...he, who held you.”
“Who caught me,” Loki said wildly. “Who pulled me from the void-”
“And made you his instrument.” The Allfather sounded weary, and Loki wanted to laugh.
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
The Allfather bowed his head and fell quiet. The silence drew out and Loki’s heart started fluttering uneasily again. He didn’t know what he had expected, but something. Not silence, unless perhaps that was simply how little the Allfather cared, that even learning that Loki had sold his soul to a demon was nothing. He forced a laugh.
“What,” he said. “That is all? Nothing to say, Odin Allfather?” Silence, and something in Loki ached as it died, some hope he had not even been aware of. “Would you still name me your son-”
Odin moved suddenly, faster than Loki would have expected him capable, grasping Loki’s head, his thumbs pressed to Loki’s temples. He let out a gasp that sent stabbing pain through his chest, certain now that he was about to die, or worse, that Odin would burn out his mind and leave a hollow shell, little better than an automaton.
He tried to summon his magic, scraps of defense, but it lay dormant (suppressed); tried to jerk away but Odin’s grip was immovable and Loki felt his defenses shoved aside-
(rifling through his memories, twisting his mind this way and that like a bauble to be studied, dissected, and if he could have breathed he would have screamed-)
Odin released him and Loki blinked like a stunned cow, gasping, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes. His brief glimpse of the Allfather’s face looked - relieved? Loki stared at him, torn between confusion and betrayal, but then Odin bowed his head again and said, his voice suddenly thick and strange, “oh, Loki.”
“What did you do,” Loki asked. His throat squeezed and he swallowed hard to quell the nausea. “Whatever you are going to do, do it-”
Odin reached out again and Loki flinched. Whatever he’d meant to do, he stopped, drawing away, and Loki struggled to read his expression, breathing quick and shallow. “I did not know,” he said, after a moment. “If I had-”
The walls felt as though they were closing in. “What would have changed?” He said, and it sounded high and wild even to him. “You would have sent your son and heir into peril-”
“To save my other son? Yes.” Loki’s eyes jerked involuntarily to Odin’s face, his eye glistening oddly. “I would have gone myself, if I were younger and more hale.”
“Liar,” Loki hissed. His heart hammered against his battered ribs. “You wanted me dead-”
“No.”
“You wanted me gone-”
“No.”
“You let me fall,” Loki shouted, his voice cracking, surging up until his body screamed and he fell back, “don’t lie, don’t lie to me-”
“I did,” Odin said, and Loki was so startled that he broke off, staring at him. “I did not catch you, and for that I am sorry. I am sorry that you suffered, and that you suffered alone.”
Loki shuddered. “Do not condescend to me.”
“I do not,” Odin said. His hand pressed Loki’s shoulder down and it felt heavy, weightier than it should have. “What you have done...that is terrible. You wronged your brother, and your mother; this, your home, and Midgard, which we are sworn to protect. But that does not erase the wrong done to you as well.” Loki couldn’t look at him. His eyes skating away, flickering around, but there was nothing else to fix on.
“No,” he said weakly. “You are wrong. It was not - I chose to, I agreed to serve that I might have what was rightfully mine-”
“I believe that you did attempt to claim Midgard for your own,” Odin said. “And I believe that you did agree, but agreement given to escape from pain - or from fear - is a shallow thing. Particularly when your captor can reach your very thoughts.”
Loki understood, somewhere distant and dazed, what Odin had done in his mind. He had been searching for any remaining trace of the link between him and Thanos’ lieutenant. If it had still been there, it was gone now. The relief he wanted to feel at that was deadened by the numbness that otherwise cloaked him.
“Death before treason,” Loki said, almost desperately. “Is that not - what a good Aesir is meant to do? But of course I could hardly be that. Do you resent my failure nonetheless?”
“No, Loki,” Odin said, and those words were like a slap in the face that sent Loki reeling, fingers digging into an open wound. He fell silent, gaping, and by the look on Odin’s face at least he recognized the echo of his last words. His last dismissal.
“No, what,” Loki rasped, clawing for words to cover the suddenly yawning fissure at his heart. “What can you deny?”
“Treason or no,” Odin said slowly, and Loki could see him choosing his words with care. “I do not wish that you had died there. I wish many things, but not that.”
Loki could feel himself shivering with a fear he couldn’t quite name. “Missing your pet jotun?” He snarled, baring his teeth, fists clenching.
“Missing my son.” Odin’s voice and expression were grave. “My son I believed lost, and for whom I grieved.” Loki’s throat closed; he couldn’t breathe. He stared at Odin, helpless, confused, feeling as though the rug had been drawn out from under him all over again.
“Go on grieving, old man,” Loki said, but his voice sounded hoarse and thin. “Your son is dead.”
“He is not,” Odin said, eye meeting Loki’s, seeing too much as always. He stood, slowly, like an old man. “Rest. Take time to heal. There will be no reckoning until you are well.”
“And then?” Loki asked, the words dragged from him unwillingly.
“That is, in part, your choice,” Odin said. Loki opened his mouth and Odin silenced him with a gesture. “No, do not speak. Think. Think on what you want. Not what would spite me, or what you think you must do, or what fear urges. What you want. Then we can speak.” Loki stared at him, at sea. “I will send your mother back in to you,” Odin said at length, turning away. “She is overjoyed at your return.”
Father. The word was on the tip of his tongue, to call Odin back. To act like a child and beg for his forgiveness, to whimper and whine and beg like a beaten dog. He should not. He should spit on this false kindness, this condescension. Reject it for the trap it was.
He did nothing. The door closed behind Odin’s bent back, leaving Loki in silence.