Loki looks up from her needlepoint. She’s not mastered the art of weaving yet, for lack of a loom like her mother’s, but this craft she practices in Frigga’s honor. The sewing arts powerfully resemble the use of Seidhr: interlocked threads of thought that radiate the incanting words across vast distances on the spiritual plane.
Her expression is both sly and affectionate when her lover enters, and finds her in the process of producing a needlepoint of Sigewif for the very witchling who now sleeps on her lap. Thea preferred Loki in serpent form, as is more customary, but mama was able to persuade her to wait a while, for progress on her surprise.
“Profitable outing?” she murmurs, quiet enough to keep the toddler sleeping. She sets aside the needlepoint and reaches for the baby blanket. She places it over her womb.
Her breasts have been tender, her humors more labile, her appetites strange and her stomach sour. She has not bled when it was time. And rune stones have confirmed it.
So she guides Balthazar’s hand over her lower belly, and, while smiling all the slier, simply nods.
He halts at the sight of all that is dear in his world, missing but the son he can hear singing cheerily in his bedroom down the hall. Theophania, peaceful in slumber with her curls tossed haphazardly as she sleeps on mama’s lap, and Loki, his divine and brilliant love, so sly and clever and exquisitely gorgeous in the autumn light. The angel nods his agreement, the trip was quite profitable indeed, and when he has set aside the bags he offers the blanket to his lady love and kneels reverently beside the comfortable couch to further admire her.
Quietly, he informs her, “I have provisions lovely enough that they may even tempt your misbehaving stomach into civility once more.” His worry is obvious in the furrow of his brow and Balthazar studies her lovely green eyes with concern bright in his own blue ones.
And then—
She has taken his hand and her smile is even more sly, the proud and wily smile of a natural trickster with the sweetest of surprises. He stifles a gasp out of deference to their sleeping witchling and his eyes are filled with tears. Joy floods his veins in a bright and singing sensation of warmth and he beams, leaning forward to cup her cheek and press sweet kisses to her lips, over and over and over.
“My heart,” the angel breathes, shaky and soft and filled with wonder. “You have created a life from our love—“ his voice breaks, thick now with the tears of bliss that fill his eyes. He cannot summon the poetry he so loves to offer his beloved, can only rest his forehead against hers and smile as he feels gently for the hidden spark of life within Loki’s bright and beautiful magic. Tiny and vibrant and he is lovestruck once more so he brushes their noses gently together and beams all the more brightly through his tears.
A smugly contented Trickster she is. Loki, ever the most guarded and cautious of souls, introspective, fiercely shy as her truest self, delights in sharing momentous news with her loves ones with eyes aglint and tongue prodding through grinning teeth. Indirectly, askance. As in this moment.
“Oh, my sweet fool, stop it.”
Her eyes flush with tears; curse her body and the ungainly ways it accommodates their bright new life.
“Stop it, I said, or I shall weep and kick you away,” she insists, wetly laughing and, quite contrary to her words, gathering the Angel of Families near. How apt this evidence that some benevolent higher power, unfathomable to her, has deigned to fill her ache for her own clan with the celestial being who nourishes the very concept.
Between kisses she laughs some more, soft breaths like stirring leaves, resigned to the fact that Thea may awaken to her parents in such a state of mutual rapture.
“I might’ve told you sooner, but it has only been several weeks, and I suspected as soon as several days, for we have been trying quite persistently, and I rarely have difficulty, quite the contrary in fact, I’ve carried multiples… eheh, ehh, would you … pay attention, eheheh … . ! I decided … !!!”
She smacks a palm square to the center of his chest.
“I decided that I would tell you today, by having a friend at the market place that very blanket within your purview. What do you think? Am I very clever? Do continue, now, to praise your wife.”
When Loki was a child, and even into adolescence, he would ask one thing of Thor, in return for serving as his confidante, his apologist, his advocate and friend: he would ask it to rain. The rain was evidence of Thor’s omnipresence, and Thor was to Loki a hero and standard of excellence. Thor was, to Loki, home. So when it rained, home enveloped Loki in a warm mist, which was always, despite soaking him to the bone, strangely comforting.
It is raining today in Wakanda, as Loki summons the courage to reveal himself–plucked forth in time by a message that, in the future, he would sacrifice his life to Thanos in exchange for his brother’s, and christened an agent of rewritten history. An agent of Thanos’s ultimate demise. The pretender, the vile bruise-colored cockroach who played at immortality for the sake of mass genocide. The arbiter of Loki’s worse torments, by the hand of Ebony Maw. Loki will enjoy pissing on Thanos’s corpse.
But today is something more important still: the easing of Thor’s grief.
Reconciliation.
As Loki slips through the palace security in the guise, down to fingerprints and retinas, of a member of the Dora Milaje, he wonders whether Thor will believe the truth, that he truly died, or will scoff in a fury at being “had” yet again. He wonders whether this will disinter ghosts for Thor, and make his suffering worse.
Regardless, formless and fleeting as running water, wet from the rain that comforts, Loki-as-guard sets down his spear and knocks on the door to Thor’s chambers.
“Your Majesty, a word.”
I told you never to doubt. Now you know I was being sincere. Now you know I have ever loved you, brother.
Thor was more in control today, at least that’s what everyone else thought, but even the very rain reminded him of Loki. The lack of lightning and the absence of booming thunder gave those who were less aware this thought, this appearance. In realty, the lightning had merely found another home, in his very room.
Nightmares, those which really weren’t nightmares, but memories plagued him. Those were the worse because they were inescapable even when ones’ eye opened. Yet his method of coping with them really wasn’t coping at all but instead..a freeing from the excess power flowing through his veins in his grief through the form of blackened walls and flashes of what could’ve been.
The thunder too had found another home. It echoed in time with his very heartbeatinside him.
The knock at his door was startling. As were the words spoken. Few had ventured down to the part of the castle he’d claimed as his own, however temporarily that it might be. Less of them had used his proper title in their shared grief and he hadn’t demanded it. What had changed now, besides the fact that for once he’d gotten out of bed and actually changed? It wasn’t acceptance… just a numbness and a need to move that had propelled him to do so.
A minute stretched on like an eternity as he debated what to do, but in the end..Wa’kanda’s people had been understanding of him… so maybe it was time to pay them back. The wary King opened the door. Immediately he noticed odd things, like the fact the guard was wet from head to toe and that the spear was on the ground instead of in her arms. Despite being their ally and in the castle, even he had noticed the spears were never not in the ladies hands. They were an impressive force and always prepared for battle. “What brings you down here?” Thor questioned, though he summoned his axe quietly to his hand from behind his back, just incase.
Guised still as the guard, Loki swallows, and steadies himself, and ventures,
“My king. Please, look out the window. There is something you must see.”
He waits for Thor to oblige, and when his brother has turned, the glamour about his person vanishes. It’s a merciful effort to break the overwhelming truth gently.
He gazes at his brother’s back, and never more has the sight of (burdened, now so burdened) broad shoulders and careless golden hair been the sight of safe haven. The Trickster God’s eyes are soft in a face still more gaunt than usual, starved by solitude and secrecy, and stress.
He steps toward Thor, one pace at a time, quelling the childish urge to turn and run, for how could this moment ever meet the standards established in his mind? How could it ever measure up to the elation of reuniting with the only family he still has? The hope of just one person in Loki’s life who might greet him with gladness and pride, and not disappointment?
He swallows again.
Ever since learning that his future self, the self who was and yet will never be, was strangled to death by Thanos, Loki has found it difficult to swallow, even to breathe. His throat always feels a little too tight.
He says nothing now, only comes to a halt shoulder to shoulder, on even terrain, with the Thunder God, and waits for Thor to turn and look at him.
And realize.
Thor finds it immediately strange to be called called king, especially by one of the lady guards…. however, he honors the request. Yet he feels it when the presence changes to one he has known all his life, it takes his breath away. Could it be? Or was his mind playing a terrible trick on him? How?
Much like how the rain comforted Loki and spoke of his presence, Thor could feel the difference in the air as magic shimmered, and something about it called to him. Maybe it was because it was so familiar, especially Loki’s magic. Did he dare to turn though? What if he was wrong?
The thunderer’s first instinct was to turn and touch, but Thor hesitated, what if it was a trick..one of the stones, or his mind? Norms that would break him. Though that shimmer was unmistakable. Taking a deep breath, the king turned, and immediately pulled Loki into his arms, into a hug, so he was real. That was all that mattered. “Loki… how? I thought I had lost you, but I had hoped…” He whispered, looking at his brother, blue eye watching the other god intently, but starting to gloss up slightly. “Brother.”
The blond wasn’t sure how it was possible, but his brother was solid and real in his arms. Alive. A miracle? Magic? Thor didn’t know, he just cared about having some part of his family back. “I shall not fail you again, brother, but for now, I am proud of you, and glad to have you back.” He promised, voice trying to break again with the depth of his emotion.
Loki, who had been long braced for this moment, averts his eyes to the floor the moment his brother–big, burly, warm, scented of leather and petrichor and home–roughly envelops him. A stray tear betrays his mask of composed indifference, slipping down a sharp cheekbone. Other than that, however, he remains tightly affixed to Thor, breathing unsteadily, patiently awaiting his own calm.
Savoring, perhaps, that he is not so alone as he had feared.
Wishing, certainly, that Thor knew, that he is often, if not usually, a detriment to Loki’s welfare, his self-worth, his survival: and yet Loki’s love for his brother is so fixed, simply because Thor has always loved him, too, holes and scars and worn-away parts and missing things and all, and has gone quietly, casually, unremarkably about that loving, as if Loki’s existence at his side was always a universal construct, a given, like gravity or oxygen. Without even thinking twice.
“Let’s not talk of failure right now,” Loki hears himself speak, and he is only mildly humiliated to hear that his throat still chokes on the words. “I will explain all. Please know that it was no deceit, but that I am real and I am here, all the same.”
Loki has sensed his witchling’s distress already. He descends the stairs from his study, every surface, including the outside corner of his right hand, littered with ornately inked runes. He kneels before Thea, implored from any corner of the cosmos by those two syllables: mama.
“Here, loveling. Here. Give your friend to me. I’ve a spell for soothing her.”
Loki strokes the rabbit’s spine, savoring the feel of its softest and warmest fur, murmuring an incantation in a watery tongue. A murky earth-hued cloud of magic brightens to gold and mingles with lime, effecting a blissful sedation.
“Is bunny gonna be okay?” Her voice is soft, the little lass getting better already at the gentle tone needed to soothe equally little creatures. She implicitly trusts mama, looking up with worried hazel eyes.
“Galley an’ Siggy find her under the rosies. She scared, huh? Poor bunny, they not gonna eat ya, promise!” She leans against Loki’s sturdy shoulder, laying her head on his arm and studying the bunny with a faint little frown. “They not gonna, right mama?” She’s just double checking, sometimes the things in their bowls are red, red, red with blood. But surely they wouldn’t eat this poor little bunny, not an innocent little bunny!
The God of Mischief hums in accord with his daughter’s question.
“Very much so. She merely needs rest. I have cast a healing upon her, and now, I am soothing her to sleep, so that she will let it take hold. Would you like to help me, wildling?”
He guides one of Thea’s hands to the rabbit’s soft pelt, demonstrating how to pet it.
“Gently. Very … very gently … and you must think all the while upon how you love the sensation. How you love the whole of the animal. Its whiskers. Its ears. Its bright black eyes. Its fur. Its strong legs. Its tail. Think on how you love it, and therefore, become it. And it shall feel your love, and rest easy.”
^^^^ Couldn’t have said it better in its totality myself. Nebula could even be like “that’s rough, buddy” when Loki confided to her that Thor continued to adulate Odin because it’s less painful of a cognitive dissonance for Thor to think Loki is the bad apple and Odin is the gruff but well-meaning patriarch.
There are stunning similarities between Odin and Thanos, particularly when you take into account Odin’s reign of “benevolent” imperialism, which was finally made explicit in Ragnarok despite all of Ragnarok’s narrative flaws. The only difference between Odin and Thanos is: A) scale of genocide B) Odin was a cunning pragmatist who knew he was wrong and concealed it systematically, and Thanos was a mad ideologue who fully believed his cause was noble and justified. Not sure which is worse, since the effects are the same: a lot of innocent people dead, and your own children totally fucked up.
Loki turns an expression of grave bemusement on his son.
“Humans, loveling. Humans. Their lifespans are naturally limited to roughly eighty or ninety years, and owing to this, their vocabulary becomes as stunted, coagulated, and nonsensical as moldy mashed potatoes.For this reason we pity them, andlook the other way.”
icyxmischief 