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Asgard’s cells are, perhaps, the safest place in the cosmos for Loki right now.
There will be no realm, no barren moon… He cannot hide through trickery. He cannot run fast or far enough. He cannot lose himself in a multitude. The Other would find him. Though his mind is (mostly) his own, there is a tether there, and the Other will be able to follow it wherever Loki goes.
But here, not hidden but in plain sight? In the centre of one of the few realms that would truly prove a challenge to the Mad Titan’s might? Separated from the outside world by a thick barrier of magic that shields him from the hallway as much as it shields the hallway from him? Here, it will be long before Thanos has the chance to fulfil his promise to a broken prince. He might have centuries in this cell, perhaps even millennia of life.
Not much of a life, admittedly — these four walls, one made of magic and mostly see-through; the few books his mother has brought him; regular, uninspiring meals; no natural light, no greenery, though at least not the cold darkness of the Void — but it is a life all the same, and he, creature of selfishness and survival that he is, will cling to whatever scraps he can hold in his frozen fingers.
That is why, when a prisoner breaks out of one of the other cells, he finds it immensely unsettling. He thinks he might be able to escape with trickery and magic, but surely not with his fists. If a random rebel from Vanaheim can break through with pure force…
He waits with bated breath, wondering if the horned no-longer-prisoner will set him free, will place him back in the hands of the Other, will exchange this long half-life for a shorter, more painful one. He half-longs for it — for freedom, for a breath of fresh air, for sunlight — even as he dreads what would doubtless follow.
The prisoner turns away, and the mixed surge of relief and anger that follows is uncomfortable enough that he pushes fury to the forefront: what are Thor and Odin doing, that prisoners can so easily escape their cells? Is this not the centre of Asgard’s might? How dare they leave the prisoners so unguarded — how dare they leave him so unprotected?
He wants this break-out to shake them, force them to realize that Agard is not so all-powerful as it would like to believe itself.
And so… it would not do if this rebellion were so easily quashed, would it?
“You might want to take the stairs to the left,” he says.
~
The words swell up from a momentary impulse of fury on the part of the Einheri left to guard the disgraced second prince. His name is Erik Erikson, and as he stands in the hallway by the cell, he feels anger beat in his chest in place of his heart.
The funeral is still going on outside, by the shore. The royal family is doubtless there in a show of support for those killed in the attack; the ceremony will be grand, if only because it has been so long since Einherjar have died in defence of the realm. He listens to the funeral march that sounds over the lake, out of his sight, and cannot even offer his fresh grief the comfort of watching his brother’s soul ascend to Valhalla — because he is stuck here, watching a traitor to the realm read books.
He has nursed a quiet resentment for his no-longer-prince since, a few centuries back, he spent an uncomfortable two hours as a squirrel, until Prince Thor went to the king and begged him to intercede. He has wished pain on the younger prince many times, but never so much as now, when this traitor’s family still lives, while he, who has always been loyal, has lost— has lost—
He wants this disgrace of a prince to feel even a fraction of what he does.
That is why he tells the lie. “I have been sent to inform you,” he says, quiet, leaning forward and enjoying the way that the prisoner’s eyes flicker to him in apparent disinterest, “that the Prince is dead.”
~
Your brother the Prince is dead, the guard says.
So passive. Is dead, as though it is an event without cause, explanation, fault. Loki almost wants to laugh: and they call him the God of Lies?
What the guard should have said is you killed your brother.
Monstrous child of monsters, his mind whispers. Loki son-of-none, Loki Laufeyson, you who thought you had already done your worst—
The deadly curse hidden amongst the golden Aesir and their golden prince. Their prince so bright that he casts Loki’s silver into shadow, and from that shadow has come a monster in human skin.
Worse than a monster: he is Loki Kinslayer, and to be Jötun-born is nothing to the horror of this.
And even now, he shudders at the second voice that twines through his mind: you should be glad — Thor betrayed you — he threw you from the Bifrost, he did not look for you, he left you here to darkness and to me—
But that voice he can push aside, for it belongs to the Other, to the scepter, to dreams and delusions from which he has scarcely begun to gather together the scraps of himself. And yet now it is easy to remember that Thor did not throw him from the Bifröst, that Loki let go, because the knowledge is a spike that cleaves his heart in two. More insidious than any lie is the only truth that the Other left him with: that Loki deserves this pain. To attribute to Thor a cruelty that he has not committed would be to spare Loki one more ache, and that is a mercy that he will not permit himself.
The truth hurts more than any lie, and so he flays his own skin with it. Thor has always been a better brother than Loki has ever deserved. Thor has always loved him. Thor tried to catch him. Thor tried to bring him home from Midgard. Thor is dead without giving Loki the chance to apologise, or explain, or — or —
But what does it matter whether Thor forgave him or not? He has slaughtered his brother. Aesir blood that he does not share stains his hands up past the wrists, past the forearms, washing away any thought of the Jötunn lines across his skin. What do they matter, in light of what he has done? Who cares if his true skin is monstrous, when his words are more monstrous still?
He does not remember what his last words were to his brother, his mind still scattered after the Mind Stone’s insidious influence, still shattered at the Other’s hands. The only words that matter are you might want to take the stairs to the left.
(kinslayer kinslayer kinslayer kinslayer)
He half-wishes the guard were still here, if only that he might tell someone of his crimes, that Odin might execute him at last.
Coward, he thinks next, for though he knows he deserves worse, he has made no move to face it. No move to reach for his just punishment at the Other’s hands — you will long for something so sweet as pain — rather than cowering in an Asgardian prison.
Even now, he shies away from that thought. Even blood-stained, his hands tremble. Even now, the kinslayer, the monster, the craven lying traitor has made no move to take the punishment that he so richly deserves.
To die under Gungnir’s blade would be a mercy, and he — coward, murderer, selfish, liar — longs for it.
But no. Not yet. Thor’s blood is on his hands but not on his alone. This death is tragedy enough to condemn the myrkálfar and Loki both, with plenty of guilt to spare.
It would, perhaps, be… fitting… if it was at the hand of one of Thor’s killers that each of the others dies.
And so a plan forms in his mind. One that will bring justice to each and every soul stained with Thor’s blood.
He will not see his brother in death — the halls of Valhalla are not for such as he — but at least he will not have to see this world without him much longer.
~
Loki delicately reaches out with his seiðr to cast an illusion on the outside of the cell — an illusion of a fallen barrier.
The Einheri guard’s eyes widen, and he runs forward to slam his hand against the rune that turns the barrier on and off. Really, what a ridiculous design flaw. Behind the illusion, the real barrier drops, and Loki steps through, invisible. His projection remains inside the cell, laughing, as the barrier rises again upon the guard’s second panicked press of the rune.
Loki steps neatly around the bewildered Einheri and walks silently through the bloodstained halls of the palace. No corpses remain — he could hear the funeral services from his cell, never knowing whose funeral it was — but marks of blood remain to show where they fell.
The devastation he sees out of the palace windows is far more than he had expected. Some distant part of him wonders, even aches, at the destruction of the city of his birth. Most of him is icy-cold and numb.
He steals an empty skiff — there’s too much chaos still for its absence to be noticed for some time yet — and points it towards the thin cleft in the rock that leads to Svartálfheim.
Loki resists the temptation to change its direction just a hair, just enough to collide with the cliff face — just enough to crush even his Jötunn (monster) bones.
But his hand on the rudder does not waver. He does not deserve that mercy yet. In a blur of the multicoloured light of Yggdrasil, he emerges into Svartálfheim.
He can see the wreckage of Bor’s war: the shattered ships, a sun perpetually in eclipse, a wasteland that was once a thriving planet. More importantly, the myrkálfar have evidently kept their vessel cloaked from both normal sight and Heimdall’s Sight, as they prepare to launch a second attack for the Aether. It takes great skill to hide from Heimdall, and thus most would assume that to hide from Heimdall is to be completely hidden — but Loki, too, knows how to hide, and thus has a better idea than most how to find. He need merely trace the feeling of the magic that hangs in the air, almost tangible, as a result of the myrkálfar’s working.
He leaves the skiff behind and takes, instead, the form of a falcon. No bird belongs in this desolate realm, but this form is smaller and more agile than any other. And he is careful as he cloaks himself from sight: he can learn from his enemies’ mistakes. They will not see him or sense him until he wills it so.
When he flits inside the ship through an open airlock door, myrkálfr healers are gathered around Malekith, whose face bears the unmistakable scars of Thor’s lightning. Loki’s ever-spinning mind freezes at the sight, for a moment, and then begins to turn again, but with blades of ice where once there were gears. He wonders if his mind will be sliced to ribbons by them, and then remembers that it already has been. All that is left of the monster known as Loki Kinslayer is icy rage.
The Kursed steps forward from another group of healers and says something. Loki curses his own refusal to use All-Speak: yes, he prefers to learn languages the hard way so that he understands the precise meaning of every word he says — useful, for the Silvertongue, to weigh and measure each syllable — but when a language has not been used for five millennia, he is left clueless.
Malekith apparently agrees with whatever has been said, and the healers are waved away in favour of warriors. Generals, perhaps.
Loki takes in a slow, leisurely breath. His seiðr is no longer limited by his cell, but it is also not fully replenished. He is a skilled fighter, and does not doubt his ability to defeat the ordinary myrkálfar and even Malekith with his current stores of seiðr, but the Kursed will fall to no blade.
He does not seek glorious battle, nor does he fight for honour. He kills to exact vengeance and nothing more. He does not reveal himself, therefore, as he slips from his perch and stands up Aesir — fully armed, in his familiar leathers, his horned helm weighty on his head.
(Cow, Thor would always say, affectionately. Pigeon, he would retort. That winged helm he once mocked is now without an owner.)
On silent feet, he creeps up beside the Kursed and activates the black hole grenade — recognizable from the histories and a few replicas in the vault — on its belt. Two quick steps back.
Thor’s first killer dies with a strangled scream on his lips as he vanishes into nothingness. Loki allows himself a smirk before he buries his next two blades in the closest myrkálfar’s necks.
The rest of them are on guard by now, blades raised before them. Seiðr fills the air, attempting to locate Loki: these were, after all, once elves of Alfheim, skilled in the use of magic, before they were corrupted by the Aether and the dark energy it can create.
He can hide from them, but it takes effort, and he would not be able to remain hidden all the way through the ship. Better to conserve his energy stores now, to use when he has more need of it.
Loki ducks under an outstretched blade and releases his cloaking seiðr just as he yanks his dagger out of the myrkálfr’s throat in a spray of blood. Whatever else they are, the myrkálfar are not bad fighters, and he swiftly finds himself in the midst of a circle of five elves.
He dispatches them one at a time, not wasting any effort on displays of strength but instead opting for the quiet use of magic and pure efficiency of movement that has always led to his being labelled as a dishonourable fighter. He is fast, but by the time the fifth corpse hits the ground, Malekith and the remaining two myrkálfar are gone.
Good, he thinks. His blood sings for a hunt.
Before leaving the bridge, he deactivates the ship’s cloaking mechanism, directs it to lower itself down from its hiding place in the sky, closes the hatchways through which the smaller ships could escape, and then completely destroys the controls. If he has his way, there will be nothing left of the myrkálfar by the time he’s done with them.
Then he follows Malekith’s trail down into the bowels of the ship.
Two myrkálfar fall upon him as soon as he steps out of the bridge into a narrow walkway. He ducks, allowing the first one’s sword to whistle over his head and force the second elf to step back, which gives him space to drive his own blade through the first myrkálfr’s throat. He throws another knife into the eye-hole of the other’s mask, knocking it back off of the walkway.
The ship sinks slowly through the dead air. Loki moves step by step down through the ship, burying his daggers in carefully-chosen places: a femoral artery, an eye, under a rib to the heart, a neck, a spine. He uses corpses as shields, he attacks from behind without warning, he distracts with illusions, he deflects attacks with small bursts of telekinesis instead of using his own blades. This is a massacre no skáld will sing of, but the ice in Loki’s veins sings enough for him — a song, not of glory, but of brutal vengeance.
His armor and his skin is red with the too-bright blood of the myrkálfar, that remains the colour of the Aether even as it dries, sticky, on Loki’s skin. It is only a few shades off of Thor’s colours, and he finds himself laughing as he kills, laughing as he shows his allegiance to his brother far, far too late for it to matter.
The ship is tall and narrow, and Loki is only halfway down when there is a shuddering crash as the ship hits the ground, moving with too much force without anyone at the controls to steer its descent. He sets off another black hole grenade against the side of the ship, giving himself a window through which he sees the remaining myrkálfar — perhaps sixty or so warriors, about half what he estimates was on the ship when he began — streaming out of the ship to form a defensive formation with Malekith at their centre.
Good. The narrow corridors and tight corners of the interior of the ship benefit him as a single fighter, but he’ll have more room to maneuver outside, and more light by which to see Malekith’s face as he dies.
Loki jumps out through the hole in the side of the ship, shifting briefly into a falcon again to control his landing. A thrown spear hurtles past him, but he is agile in the air, and returns to his Aesir form in the middle of their formation while an illusory Loki stalks towards the group head-on. His blades slip through the cracks in their armour and under their masks as he moves towards Malekith.
The Dark Elves’ King does not allow himself to be distracted by the illusions that send his followers into chaos as they turn on each other, seeing enemies in place of allies. He turns to meet Loki in the centre of the group.
The air trembles for a moment, and Loki sees a blur of rainbow light slam into Svartálfheim’s plain. The Bifröst. Odin is apparently almost as eager to avenge his son as Loki.
He can clean up the lesser myrkálfar, Loki thinks uncharitably. Malekith is his.
A myrkálfar spear stabs towards him, but he slides out of its path and wrenches it from its owner’s grasp. He takes a moment to spin it and bury one end in its former owner’s chest, before yanking it clear and turning on Malekith.
This is a dance. Loki does not fight with honour, but neither does his newest opponent. He’s forced to use a burst of seiðr to clear the air of the dust that Malekith kicks into his eyes; Loki retaliates with a swept-out leg that hooks around Malekith’s ankle as Loki thrusts a spear towards his half-burnt face. The myrkálfr leans backwards, his spine curving impossibly far; one hand hits the ground, allowing Malekith to kick up his feet and knock Loki back a step, before defying gravity once again to curve improbably upright. The myrkálfar may no longer have the Aether, but they have learned many of its reality-defying tricks.
Malekith attacks again, blade sweeping out to the side and in at Loki’s neck, and Loki ducks but leaves behind an illusion that disperses at the touch of the blade. The lack of resistance makes Malekith stumble slightly, and Loki uses the opportunity to fling a pair of daggers towards the dark elf’s face. One scores a bright red line across his untouched cheek; the other whistles past his head as he evades it.
“Oho, little prince,” Malekith murmurs, laughing as he recovers. “You fight dirtier than I’d expect of a son of Bor.”
Loki is vaguely aware that the majority of the myrkálfar have turned to confront the battalion of Einherjar brought by the Bifröst, Odin at their head, but Malekith does not turn to face his newest opponents, so Loki ignores them as well.
“I am not of Bor’s line,” Loki replies, deflecting the next attack with a dagger while yanking Malekith’s other arm to the side with a bit of seiðr. Malekith is forced to lean back again to avoid the spear in Loki’s other hand, and Loki follows up on the advantage with a swift kick to the knee.
He splits off a pair of illusions, but Malekith promptly swings his blade through both of them, his reach just long enough to leave a long score across the real Loki’s stomach. He barely feels it, using Malekith’s recovery to step quickly towards him — too close for his opponent’s long blade to be effective. His dagger, aimed for Malekith’s throat, is blocked by the elf’s armoured forearm, so he grabs a fistful of the pale white hair and slams Malekith’s face down onto his knee. The feeling of a nose breaking brings a cruel smile to Loki’s face.
But the move also brings Malekith close enough to slam a smaller blade into Loki’s side, which in turn gives him the opportunity to kick Loki back a step. Malekith rises to his feet again, that too-red blood glittering on his face.
Loki smiles along with the six new illusions he crafts: now his fellow murderer wears Thor’s colours, too. Both of their deaths will be dedicated to his brother’s memory.
“What are you, then?” Malekith asks as they circle each other, as though their conversation has not been interrupted.
Loki’s smile grows in jagged shards. Ice, perhaps, or maybe only teeth. “Retribution.”
The clashing of blades that surrounds the two of them is distant. The myrkálfar are managing to maintain a perimeter against the Einherjar. The Bifröst appears in the sky again, likely bringing reinforcements. Now Loki is on a schedule: he needs to kill Malekith before the other myrkálfar fall. The Einherjar will capture him when they find him and cannot be trusted to keep Malekith from escaping. He will take his vengeance on the myrkálfr, and on himself as well, before Odin tries to imprison him again.
Loki surges forward once more, spear in one hand and dagger in the other, but Malekith has somehow guessed which of the illusions is real and slices the spear in two with a sweep of his sword. Loki drops the fragments and rolls under the attack, lashing out in the hopes of severing the tendons in Malekith’s legs, but Malekith leaps over his dagger with unnatural agility and spins to attack Loki again.
With only short-range daggers and throwing knives, Loki is at a disadvantage against a sword in pitched battle against a foe as canny and agile as Malekith. Moreover, his seiðr is weakening; he will not be able to maintain multiple illusions for longer than a few seconds.
He reaches out instinctively for a longer weapon, magic and hand outstretched, before he remembers that he no longer has access to the Mind Stone’s sceptre — except that something crashes into his open palm anyway.
It is accompanied by a surge of seiðr. Loki recognizes Gungnir at the same time as he hears Odin’s angry bellow, but he does not spare a thought for the man who pretended to be his father.
Gungnir’s appearance startles Malekith even more than Loki, and his next swing is easy to parry. Loki knocks him back with a blast of gold-green seiðr, then spins the spear to knock Malekith’s blade from his hands.
He stabs Gungnir’s blade through Malekith’s throat.
At the same moment, lightning forks the air.
The battlefield is a silent blur as Loki turns, Gungnir’s golden blade new-baptised in bright red blood.
He does not breathe, he does not think, he can only watch as the lightning obliterates three myrkálfar where they stand.
The air trembles with the roll of thunder.
The ice in Loki’s veins shatters, because there — in the midst of the corpses of myrkálfar, backed by the roar of the storm whose wind ripples the red cloak over his shoulders, one hand holding up Mjölnir, victorious — is Thor.
His brother smiles, tossing his hammer in the air and catching it in a move so familiar that it steals the cold from Loki’s lungs.
Gungnir falls from his numb fingers to clatter on the dry, sterile ground. Thor is turning towards Loki, and for a moment he thinks that the hidden side of Thor’s face will be a skull, or a burnt scar like Malekith’s — that this is a nightmare hidden in a dream, come to haunt Loki for what he has done.
But Thor’s face is whole, and his smile of victory is familiar. Svartálfheim’s dark light is unchanged; the battlefield is covered in corpses. There’s a line of blood along Thor’s right arm where a blow has clearly landed. Loki can see his chest rise and fall as his eyes alight on the monster who once dared to think himself his brother.
The ice that has held him up by so long is gone, melted or evaporated or shattered into pieces too small even to cut. Loki drops to his knees.
Thor frowns, his expression so terribly familiar, and then he is running across the battlefield towards Loki. Loki half-expects him to swing his hammer, to take his own richly-deserved revenge on his killer, but this is no vengeful spirit or draugr. This is his brother, and though Loki would not blame Thor should he die under Mjölnir, Thor has always been better than Loki deserves.
Thor is better than Loki deserves. Thor is!
“Loki,” Thor says, his voice concerned — not angry, not betrayed; how long has it been since Loki heard him speak so gently? Not since before the disaster of the coronation, Loki thinks — as he comes to a halt in front of him. “Loki, what are you doing here?”
Loki thinks he might laugh, or perhaps he sobs. His heart is burning in his chest. He reaches out, a last test, the only way to be sure, and feels his fingers curl through the familiar leather straps of his brother’s armour.
“Thor,” he manages. His voice creaks as it did not when he fought Malekith. “Thor. You’re alive.”
“What? Of course I’m alive,” Thor says, but the concern in his voice is growing. “You’re supposed to be safe in your cell, not fighting here!”
“They said,” Loki manages. Swallows. Allows himself to linger on the living vibration of Thor’s voice in the air, on the steady beat of his heart that Loki can feel through the leather. “They told me you died in the attack.”
Thor inhales sharply, and for a moment Loki thinks he is pulling away, for the leather in Loki’s fingers slips out of his grasp. But Thor is only dropping to one knee, placing himself level with Loki. He catches up the fallen hand and presses it to the pulse point on his neck; with his other hand, he cups the back of Loki’s in a familiar gesture that Loki has not felt in far too long.
Thor’s pulse is warm and steady against Loki’s fingers, reassuring. He succeeds in exhaling, finally, and when he breathes in, he can smell the realness of sweat and leather and lingering ozone. Too tired to continue to hold up his head, he lets his horned headdress dissolve into nothing and tips forward until his forehead rests against Thor’s chest, and breathes. Thor lets him.
His brother is here — solid, real, and alive. Loki is beside him now, and closer than they have been in years. This once, just this once, Loki has not laid waste to all that he cares for. The Norns have had mercy on him. He thinks he might be light enough to fly.
“They told me you were dead,” he repeats, and cannot bring himself to mind that his voice cracks on the last word. “I — I thought they had — that I had… I was avenging you.”
Thor half-laughs. “I am honoured, brother. But…” — and now Loki can hear the frown in Thor’s voice — “you were avenging me by going on a suicide mission? Surely you know that I would not wish for your corpse to honour my grave.”
Oh. Oh, of course. Thor doesn’t know.
Loki doesn’t particularly care who else died in the invasion, so long as Thor lives. Thor, on the other hand, cares a good deal for practically every Einheri in the palace. And so many of them are dead, now, at the hands of the attackers that Loki gave directions to.
Thor certainly notices when Loki’s muscles tense, because his hand tightens correspondingly on the back of Loki’s neck. Loki can’t quite bring himself to lean back, to lean away — greedy as he is, selfish as he has always been, he will cling to his brother for as long as he is permitted to do so. He will cling even as Thor takes his life, if that is what Thor chooses — for Thor may be hopelessly, heroically forgiving of his brother’s ills against himself, but he has ever been quick to anger on another’s behalf.
“I… it was my fault.” Loki forces the words to his lips. “When the Kursed broke out of the cells, it opened all of them but mine. I was… angry. I told it — I said — I said it should take the stairs to the left.”
Thor stills.
“So you see it was supposed to be a suicide mission,” Loki goes on. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop, not until it’s all over, not until his brother has left him behind one last time. It is for the best, he thinks, distantly; Thor has survived this most recent treachery of his, survived New York, survived the Destroyer, survived Jötunheim. It would be tempting fate were he to stay at Loki’s side now, after yet another proof that Loki kills everything he touches. “It would have been neat, don’t you see? Elegant. I kill as many of them as I can, and then either the last of them kill me or I kill them all and then myself, too, and then all of us that killed you would be dead.” He is trembling, he thinks, and wishes he weren’t, that he might properly enjoy these last few moments of his brother’s embrace. “I was going to avenge you, Thor, I give you my word that I would have taken my own life if I didn’t have the courage to give myself up to something worse—”
“No,” Thor growls. The scent of ozone in the air intensifies; Loki can feel the electricity humming under Thor’s skin. He wonders if Thor will discharge it all into him now, and if it will kill him or if he is meant for the executioner’s axe. “Don’t you dare hurt yourself, Loki.”
Loki laughs, half-mad. “Why not? Do you wish me to die at your hand instead?” At least that way, he will die in the absolute certainty that his brother still lives.
“No!” Thor’s hand tightens again on the back of Loki’s neck, but no surge of electricity follows. “I don’t want you to die at all!”
That… should not be surprising, Loki thinks. Thor has always been heroic, but he is also too sentimental to end the monster that he once called his brother. Norns above, Loki is glad he lives — although he thinks he would prefer to die at Thor’s hands than to face Odin’s punishment. “Back to my cell, then?” he asks. “Better take care. The Kursed and I have already demonstrated two ways to break out.”
“Not a cell, either,” Thor says. “You — you have done ill, I know, but you’ve proved your loyalty to Asgard, brother. Surely Father will agree—”
Oh, Thor. Naïve, optimistic Thor. “I don’t give a fig for Asgard, and Odin most certainly won’t agree to a lesser punishment after I have escaped once. No, I only—” and Loki stops, because there is being emotional because his brother is alive, and then there is baring his soul to him. Then again — it’s not as if the piled corpses behind him don’t tell this particular truth perfectly well on their own. “I only ask… would you come visit me, brother?”
It’s a humiliating request, all but a plea, and yet Loki cannot regret it, not when his brother is still here to hear it. Not when his brother, ever fierce in his affection, might grant his request now. “I don’t — I am still not quite convinced that you yet live, so I — I should like it if—”
“Of course I’d visit,” Thor says. Loki sags further into the embrace that he thinks, with increasing confidence, he will not yet lose. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow, but not today. Once again, more mercy than he deserves. “I should have visited before, ignored his orders. But Odin can’t just shut you away again—”
“Oh yes he will,” Loki snorts. “I’m dangerous, remember, and I doubt the fact that I actually succeeded in exterminating another race this time will help my case—”
But Thor is gently squeezing his neck to quiet him. “No, I mean he can’t. You held Gungnir, brother.”
It takes a moment for Loki to catch on, and then, startled, he leans back to meet Thor’s eyes. “But that’s only because I was regent during the Odinsleep while you were on Midgard! I’m not really—”
“Prince Regnant of Asgard?” Thor finishes for him. “Odin only managed to imprison you because he let it be known that you usurped the throne in my absence. I confess that I… did not truly think about the circumstances at the time, about how you couldn’t have usurped it when it was meant to fall to you by the line of succession, but… you were King. For Odin to punish you for your actions on Jötunheim is to undermine his own authority.”
Loki raises an eyebrow. Jötunheim was a crime, but not a worse one than Thor’s, mere days earlier — only more nearly successful. “And Midgard?”
Thor’s lips compress slightly, but he surprises Loki again by not immediately flying into a rage. “You and I both know that Father, along with most of Asgard, is not so concerned about the fates of mortals on a backwater planet that he should be genuinely offended by your actions there. Given that you can still hold Gungnir, you retain the Prince Regnant title and the associated power to act as a deputy of the throne, which means that as far as Asgard is concerned, you were merely subduing a realm that should already have been under our control.
“And anyway, Odin would need to call for a full Þing in order to imprison the Prince Regnant. He should have done so the first time, but he will have to do so now. And then your continued ability to hold Gungnir proves, too, that you have not truly betrayed Asgard — he can’t sentence you to anything worse than a few years’ confinement to your rooms.”
Thor, Loki realises with no small amount of surprise, has somehow become a capable politician in the last three years. Apparently his brief exile to Midgard cured him of more than his taste for genocide.
No, that isn’t fair. Thor is Crown Prince; he may have hated learning the laws of their land, but he knows them. Midgard did not give him a knowledge of politics, only sufficient patience to actually use it.
It’s true, all of it, Loki realises. He hadn’t thought that Gungnir would still come to his hand, after the Void and the Sanctuary and Midgard, but it is only a measurement of one’s feelings towards Asgard, and Loki did not willingly betray Asgard’s secrets, not until the Scepter came into play — and though Asgard’s people would shame him for failing to withstand it, Asgard’s magic knows well the difference between willing betrayal and actions done under duress. He has never truly wanted to see the Golden Realm destroyed. Taken down a peg, yes, but perhaps the magic of Gungnir agrees with him that it would be for Asgard’s own good — and so he retains his rank.
He is technically ranked higher than Thor, having sat on Hliðskjálf as King while Thor has only ever been Crown Prince. Thor would become a second Prince Regnant if Odin put him on the throne during his next Odinsleep, but for now, Loki is the second-highest-ranked individual in the Nine Realms. Odin should not, by his own laws, have been able to imprison Loki on nothing but his own word — else there would be nothing to stop Loki from imprisoning Odin while he was King and Odin slept.
But the knowledge that Loki will not be held legally accountable for his actions on Midgard is not precisely what he was asking. He has swayed Asgard’s regard to himself before, and then lost it again just as often; he cares more for his brother’s esteem. “And why, precisely, do you seek to free me from my cell? Asgard cares not for Midgard, but you certainly do.”
Thor hesitates, but Loki gets the sense that it is not from uncertainty but rather a desire to choose his words with care. “You were not in your right mind, then,” he begins, haltingly. “I… I saw that it was so, and decided that my brother had been lost to me forever — that what I fought was a madman who had killed my brother and taken his skin. But you are here, now, before me, and yourself once again. I do not know why you acted as you did on Midgard, but I do not believe that you would do it over if you were in the same position again.”
Loki looks at him for a moment more, and then finds himself laughing helplessly. “Norns, brother,” he manages. “It will never cease to amaze me how you can be so perceptive and yet so blind.” He shuts his eyes, exhaling the last of his laughter. “You are wrong. Under the same circumstances, I would behave in precisely the same way.”
He has clearly still not recovered from those few hours of thinking his brother dead, because it is a relief to see the furrow in Thor’s brow, despite the anger that it signals. “Still? You still seek a crown, even now?”
“I told you before,” Loki murmurs. “In the Observatory. ‘I never wanted the throne. I only ever wanted to be your equal.’ It is true now and it was true then.” He breathes in shakily. He… had he not just been thinking, mere hours earlier, that he wished he could have had the chance to explain himself to his brother? To apologise? To seek forgiveness? Thor still lives; does that change the fact that Loki yet owes him more truths?
“Then why?” Thor asks, bewildered. Despite the anger that has not faded, he does not loosen his grip on Loki, nor does he pull away. The last few years have taught Thor some nuance, too — enough that he can feel both protective of and angry with Loki, all at once. “Why attack Midgard, if not for its throne?”
Loki sighs, long and slow. Thor will think him weak — Thor will see down to the dark, broken core of him — but if he truly regretted that Thor should die without knowing it, then he must tell him of it now, when he is so miraculously returned. To do otherwise would be to tempt the Norns to take Thor away again. “As you observed, I was… not myself, at the time. I attacked at… another’s bidding.”
“‘Who controls the would-be king,’” Thor murmurs, frowning. “I should have asked again. I was… distracted. I am sorry.”
“I doubt I would have answered had you indeed pressed me further,” Loki replies, and yet it soothes something in him to hear Thor — Thor — apologising. He needs it, that reassurance, because Thor has not yet caught on. Never one for wordplay, Thor, and that means that Loki must spell it out, in all its shameful weakness. “I was unwilling — no. I was unable to act against him at the time.”
For a moment, Thor only stares. Loki thinks it might be the longest moment of his life, this suspended silence.
Then Thor growls, low in his throat. Loki suppresses a flinch, but cannot help squeezing his eyes shut. If Thor condemns him for this, he does not know what he will do.
But when Thor opens his mouth to speak, it is only one word. “Who?”
Loki blinks his eyes open. Thor’s face is a mask of fury — protective fury, even, that recalls the time when Loki was injured fighting a Vanir dragon and Thor called down lightning for the first time to obliterate it. Indeed, Thor is sparking slightly, and Loki can feel little shocks — not nearly enough to be painful, but full of potential restrained only by Thor’s affection for him — at the back of his neck where Thor’s hand still rests.
“This is an enemy that you cannot face, I’m afraid,” he replies calmly. “I will not tell you his name without your assurance that you will not go off on a suicide mission.”
“You ask more of me than you demanded of yourself,” Thor grinds out. “You killed a creature whom you only believed had hurt me. I have every right to destroy the one who has indeed hurt you.”
Insisting that the Mad Titan is too powerful a foe even for Thor is not going to do anything but drive him to greater fury. Explaining that a suicide mission made sense because Loki, too, was guilty of Thor’s presumed death would only make Thor more upset and protective. “I thought you were going to convene a Þing to stop Odin from throwing me back in a cell, brother dear,” he says instead, lightly. “There’s no need to go haring off across a galaxy quite yet.”
Thor’s lips compress as he evidently debates with himself. “The Þing first, but you tell me of him afterwards.”
“As you like,” Loki concedes. Thor may have grown politically savvier in the last three years, but he has not learned to watch his words quite well enough, yet. Loki has not said how long afterwards — and if he dies before sending Thor after the Mad Titan and to his death, well, the only possible punishment for a dead oathbreaker is to be banned from Valhalla. Loki already knows he will not see the halls where the brave shall live forever.
Thor beams at him, that bright, bright smile that Loki does not think he could ever cease hoping to provoke, and pulls Loki to his feet as he stands up. And then supports Loki when he wavers: in the heat of his battle-rage, Loki did not feel any wounds, but now he is aware of a diverse array of aches and pains and of the faintness of blood loss.
Thor, on the other hand, is almost entirely unharmed, making Loki wonder whence came the guard’s belief that he had been killed. Rumor? Malice? He would really like to speak to that guard, find out if a significant portion of the population is suffering under the impression that the Crown Prince is dead—
And there he goes, acting like a prince again. Some habits of mind are hard to break, evidently, and Thor’s presence here, at his side as he has been for centuries but was not for the last three years, has brought back the mindset of the Prince of Asgard.
The Prince that he still is — Prince Regnant, to be precise. The title of one who has briefly ruled the realm as Regent, and thus retains some measure of the throne’s authority even after the true King rules once again. Gungnir would come to a Prince Regnant’s call; in fact, Gungnir defines the Prince Regnant title as it does the King’s. If either one moves against Asgard or betrays its interests, Gungnir will desert them and come to the hand of the next in line for the throne who remains true to the realm. In battle, if multiple individuals call for it, it will pass to the one whose intentions are truest or most Asgardian — hence why Loki, full of proper Aesir vengeance and facing down the ruler of an enemy people, could take it from the hands of Odin, who merely led a charge against ordinary troops.
Loki swallows and raises his head as he stands beside the brother that he, despite all expectations to the contrary, has not yet lost. He opens his hand and Gungnir flies into it, so he shifts his weight to lean more on it and less on Thor.
Then they walk, together, through the bright red battlefield to face their father.