Ah! Clearly, OBVIOUSLY, the young master of insecurity surmises, my brother doubts my ability to bolster his spirits. I must make all the MORE EARNEST an effort!
He stops squirming to prove himself long enough to rest his forehead against his brother’s. There is a sublimely centering peace in the moment, as ever. With Thor’s almost sheepish prescription for caution, Loki cannot help but wheeze a quick, breathless chuckle.
Now that, he muses, though dares not mock aloud, is a role reversal.
“For that, brother, we need not leave this very spot. Come, let us pass your dreariness in an Asgard just after the Summer Solstice.”
He draws a breath deep from his diaphragm, and exhales, cleansing his lungs and his mind. Both arms he spreads, and gazes at the very molecules of the air commandingly. His eyes are green dagger-tips, the irises swallowed by the dark maws of his pupils. He licks his lips, once, and then he conjures.
Seidhrs sizzle from his chest out through the ventricles and veins of his limbs. Two great spheres of lime-gold burn blindingly in his palms. Then it materializes, one fine detail at a time: the field just past the gate of the city of Asgard proper. Every wisping wave of grain, every blade of grass. Every cluster of thistle and foxglove, daisy and cornflower. There is a single tree, a yew, monumental, that springs just right of center, a fair distance from the forest embracing the meadow’s edges. In its gnarled roots, there is a secret treasure trove where Thor and Loki, as young boys, once hid bird’s nests, feathers, shells, oddly malformed coins, dice, bilgesnipe scales and raven claws, and drawings–mostly by Loki, of Thor, or Frigga, or Odin–surprisingly adept for a child, in watercolor. In this illusion, should he choose to venture toward the shade of the yew, Thor will find duplicates of these treasures: for they exist in the mind’s eye of the conjurer who holds them so dear.
Next, murmuring furious incantations in a watery tongue that is the root of Old Norse, growing slightly gray-skinned with his effort, but far too eager to press down on and stomp out the spell, Loki manufactures a hot breeze scented of honeysuckle and dirt and skin kissed by the sun. There’s the sound of the grass stirring, and the occasional bee or locust.
He heaves a sigh, and turns a vaguely giddy grin on Thor.
“Well? Go on, walk about in it! You’ll only be strolling down the halls of the palace’s east wing!”
Even Thor, in his currently flagging mood, can’t help but smile to realize that this is the scene that Loki plans to conjure. The Summer Solstice is his most favorite time of year, when Asgard is in the height of beauty and bloom.
Even then, the scene Loki conjures around them is even clearer than he remembers it. Thor actually gasps aloud a little to see it. Perhaps Loki has been improving in his tricks. Or perhaps Thor is just in the sort of mood where he’s all the more desperate to notice these particular details.
Even this might have been enough – a tangible reminder that summer will come again, a way to conjure the memory of warm sunlight. Thor feels bolstered, a man in deep water who’s finally managed to close a hand around a lifeline. When he lays eyes on that yew tree, almost looking as though the dirt has been freshly tossed around its roots, Thor turns to look at his brother once more. His eyes are bright, his smile less strained. “Loki…”
Whatever words of praise he might have been about to speak, for he is about to speak many, are forestalled by the feeling of the most wonderful and impossible things – the scents, the sun, seeming so far way and already so much missed.
Thor closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and just basks in it all for a long moment.
But even then, when he opens his eyes once more, Thor can’t fail to see the newly grey tinge to Loki’s skin, the way his shoulders seem to slump a little. It’s true that this is far beyond anything Loki has ever conjured for him before, especially on so little rest. A stab of concern clouds his heightened spirits.
Are you all right?he should ask. You can stop, he should say. This is more than enough. Later on, when he is alone and his spirits are low once more, Thor will wish that he had and berate himself for his thoughtlessness. But for now, the thoughts are louder and more insistent in reminding him that Loki was soinsistent and this is all so wonderful and surely it wouldn’t do any harm to enjoy it all for a few moments.
So he merely smiles, bright and broad like his usual self, and claps Loki heavily on the back, declaring with feeling: “Magnificent work, brother!” And then he can’t resist the urge to hasten over to investigate the yew tree. Is their little cache really all there?
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki feels a trickle of warm liquid escaping his nose. In the wake of Thor’s hard-mustered cheer, the younger prince of Asgard hastens frantically to conceal the toll taken on his body.
At the same moment, a seed of RESENTMENT embeds in his psyche; can you not see that I suffer on your behalf? I am frightened of your disappointment . . .
But he chides himself all the FIERCER: you are second. Not first. Second, in all things. It is his prerogative to be thusly indulged.
Not yours.
The Thunderer, born first, traded kisses to your scabbed knees, and plentiful piggy-back rides, and a kind of cliff-bluff- like shelter, steady and firm, for your subordination. Remember this lest the ALLFATHER be angrier with you still.
“You like it, then?” he finally bleats, and winces at the unexpected thinness of his voice. “it’s meant to imitate our favorite summer romping spot, when we were small. You recognize that tree, do you? It’s fascinating, the particular frequency of magic required to, ehm, simulate the texture of the bark. Feel it! Thor?”
From Loki’s vantage point, Thor has long since disregarded his almost elated reiterations of his scientific process. The Trickster God wilts almost imperceptibly; be quiet, you queer, misplaced, slim little scholar. Do you not recognize already how vastly he indulges you, when none of his strapping friends can bear the nuisance of your company? When they mutter to him at the taverns such complaints as, “your brother stares at me so, without blinking, just like a snake,” and “why must your brother not choose a single form? It is unsettling how at one time he is a man, and an instant later, a woman?” and “How do you know he hasn’t enchanted us all to do his bidding? How can you TRUST a Seidhr Master?”
This entire landscape is probably more for your benefit than for Thor’s.
“ … thank you,” Loki finally murmurs, balking a good five feet shy of where Thor has gone.
I told you never to trust me. Why, then, do I feel the same regret that your white lilies pose, when you place the sorrowful tired fragrance of lavender in my hands?
Still, Loki parses through the other blossoms that Thor quietly, grimly slides into his icy pale fingers, with a sleepless furtiveness.
Anger and resentment to match his own; hot fire where his flame burns cold. A warning that the squared jaw and brilliant blue of Thor’s gaze already, oddly, provokes Loki to further mischief.
It’s the familial affection embodied in the larkspur, and the forgiveness in the white tulip, which Loki separates from the rest with a trembling hand, to gawk at.
“ …What need I be forgiven for?” he charges venomously. “You presume MUCH.”
He balks. I am lying, and we both know it.
“ … Nay. Pay what I’ve said no mind. For what, though, are you grateful?”
Possessiveness, too … would Thor still proudly claim such a PARIAH of a baby brother?
Loki strokes the whole bouquet again. I will press these. Perhaps they will outlast my anger.
You are lying, and we both know it.
But Loki had been this way for so long that Thor feels he is gaining some practice at seeing the words unsaid, like words printed backwards on a page. One just has to turn their thoughts the right way round to understand a little more.
So all he does to admit as much is smile, humorlessly, but he indulges the charge without challenge, and leaves Loki to finish sorting through the bundle.
Forgiveness is not mine to offer on many accounts, but what I can give is yours.
And even then, when his brother speaks again, Thor’s expression grows a touch gentler in response. When he speaks, it’s almost in the tone of a reminder, wondering and disbelieving how Loki himself could forget.
“You saved my life. You saved Jane’s. You fought beside me, to avenge our mother.”
He almost wants to reach out and warm this cold fingers in his own, but instead, Thor only risks moving a hand to rest on Loki’s shoulder. If his brother will permit it, of course. Thor gives him time to flinch away.
“…you are alive, against all odds, once more.” Just because Thor was angry that he had been deceived in that regard once again, just because he had found some solace in Loki’s death, the truth of the matter now that he knows it is still one he can’t help but believe to be a good one. “I have suddenly found myself with many things to be grateful for, Loki.”
He would claim him as a brother once more, and perhaps he might do it with a little more pride than he had first done to the other Avengers. A glimmer of defiance, of you weren’t there, you didn’t see. Or at least he might, if circumstances led to his friends becoming aware of Loki’s survival once more.
But then, they never knew he died.
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki juts his jaw and averts his eyes to their two pairs of booted feet. Thor has become exceptionally adroit at reading his little brother’s illusions, both magical and rhetorical.
It comes as something not quite alien–more like a rusty muscle–when Thor begins to lavish praise on Loki.
“I like her, your Jane,” he cuts in. “Twas no jest when I said as much. She contains within her mind a universe of constellations. Her brains are her people’s Milky Way, brother.”
Thor speaks over Loki, and it vexes the Trickster, until he fully registers the implications of his brother’s words.
The emotions literally strain his face, so desperate are they not to be contained by a single skeleton’s frame. So LARGE. For he had thought the last person in all the Nine capable of being grateful MERELY FOR HIS CONTINUED EXISTENCE had died, and because LOKI had unwittingly sent her killer to her chambers. And Loki is hapless to give this claim sufficient response. He emits a strange sound, a hiccup and a cough, and something like a laugh.
“You are glad that the greatest barb in your arse is still alive?” he feebly strives to joke.
More frail still is his attempt to strike Thor in the side of his arm with an awkwardly closed fist.
Even so, something in his eyes shutters after a moment of glowing, tearful smugness. May you never trust me, though I would have you claim me again. I cannot stop myself from seeing greedy twisted roads to my victory. I cannot stop myself. Be safe, for once I succeed in destroying you, should I ever run mad with such a goal, then I will cease to exist as well.
For what is Loki without Thor?
It is, in a way, easier to speak over Loki than it ever was. His brother seems so thin and stretched and fragile, so unlike what one might expect a being to appear who has made entire worlds tremble. Thor feels as though he might be Loki’s last remaining tether, before he blows away entirely, before he truly and irreparably becomes a ghost.
The responsibility is terrifying, but not unfamiliar. It is not even entirely unwelcome, because as long as Loki remains his responsibility, it means that Loki remains here.
For Thor knows what he is without Loki. He is, at heart, desperately lonely, in a way he has always tried to spare inflicting on his mortal friends.
Thor laughs as well, and even if it’s more recognizable as such, there’s something sad in it, something tired – but also something wistful, and fond. Loki attempts what is probably a gesture of affection as though he’s only read about them in books – but he makes the effort, and that means something. Thor takes very great care to checkthe force behind his fist, before he returns the gesture.
“You have always been the greatest barb in my arse. I was always told that was what baby brothers were for. So of course I am glad. What would I do with myself without you?”
It’s said like a joke, not like that’s a question Thor has been forced to struggle with too many times before.
◣♛◢ —- –
{ You would most likely live a long and healthy life. }
Loki doesn’t voice his despairing certainty, though. Instead, he dryly smiles.
“What a high compliment you pay me. I am a pleased arse- barb.”
The Trickster’s voice only shakes slightly as he issues his counter-jest. His capacity to lift the spirits of family has always been sound, and it’s made him equate humor with expressions of affection. That, and DEFENSE. Defense–because he still stands rigid as he faces his greatest enemy and ally.
He senses Thor’s restraint, and, in it, a similar expression of love.
“ … Brother, I know that you are trying,” he ventures, then. “Though I do not pretend that our trials are behind us, for that, I thank you.”
“Speak your accusations plainly,” Loki snaps, every syllable crisp as the pop of flames on a grease fire. “What in the Nine is adunmer? I would remind Your Honor that the colloquialisms of her world are not universally understood. You think yourself so very sly, you think you have my puzzle solved, but if you believe I have an inkling of what you so saccharinely imply, with your condescending pretense of hospitality, then you are positivelyobtuse.”
He stands stiff as a rail, exercising every inch of his restraint to keep from berating her with the tip of his dagger.
“And who are you to command me to divulge all of my secrets, many of an intimately and painfully personal nature, as payment for access into your halls? How DARE you? As I have clearly conveyed, I am no whipping boy, but a KING. Show me the respect that I have ALREADY SHOWN YOU.”
He does not raise his voice; he needn’t do so to convey the full measure of his WRATH. The hue of his eyes, darkening from jade to emerald as his pupils swallow his irises, tells that tale aptly.
Loki does not budge nearer the violet entryway. Instead he lashes both arms out, a sardonic gesture of self-presentation, as his skin melts to a cobalt littered with a concentric language of scars.
“I was born of Laufey and Farbauti, the King of Jotunheim, and his undesired mistress. I was adopted by Odin Allfather, King of Asgard, at least so long as I held the potential of usefulness to him. I am child to neither realm, and so, I wear the face of both. Am I now sufficiently humiliated to enter this place? For if I am not, then it is here that we part ways, m a d a m.”
THROUGHOUT ALL THIS, sylvana is silent. the archmage is used to being on the receiving end of such words laced in tones of bitter poison & acid, & thus her features would remain INFURIATINGLY neutral. the only movement her body makes is the slow blinking of her eyes. but though her face would give the other no signal as to her thoughts at the moment, her mind is of coursereeling with inquiries of all maddening nature. ones that project different sequences of events, past, present, future, possibilities, fallacies, ah, but what if he speaking the truth, what could that hold for —
she is grateful for the distraction of his transformation. these episodes of impossible whirs of impossible knowledge have only increased since her return from forbidden APOCRYPHA, & often left her with debilitating migraines. her eyes dart about his face ( something TANGIBLE ), in obvious w o n d e r & delighted fascination. the marks on his face, they remind her of the constellations she so often studies, so often charts. she charts him now, his face. his neck. his EYES. her voice falls in dull monotone. her mind’s faculties are focused elsewhere, a place of scholarly study that takes much away in the aspect of polite conversation.
❝ dunmer are one of the three elven races, often referred to as dark elves for the distinguishing color of their skin, which ranges from shades of grey to blue, and the bright red of their eyes. ❞
❝ …and who am i? ❞
yes, second-born, who are YOU? what authority, what WORTH do you have, that could give you right to speak a t a l l ? your voice is quiet. your voice is no SHOUT, no roar of a mighty D R A G O N. she cants her chin upwards in regal defiance, & pulls forward her hood once more, so that it might cast dark & ambiguous shadows over the angularity of her visage, & HIDE the pointed ears that so add to society’s disapproval of her. you are a RAT. hiding in corners& reviled by ALL.
( she bristles now. )
❝ i am SYLVANA, archmage of the college of winterhold and SURVIVOR of maddening apocrypha. but skyrim does not care to learn my name. to them, i am the ‘ other one ’, the ‘ dragonborn’s sister ’. i am the WITCH OF WINTERHOLD, and i have children to protect. ❞
( she had meant to say apprentices, of course, but alas. tricky thing, emotion. )
❝ king or no king, you a strange newcomer with powerful magic, and i’ll not compromise the safety of my charges by granting you direct proximity with them merely because you ASKED. whether you find that humiliating or not, is something rather out of my control, and none of my business. ❞
a long sigh is released. one of cleansing, & one of tranquility. in fact, one of her hands idly moves to her opposite wrists, where it flickers with a cool jade color across the entirety of her waifish frame. like the sigh, this is a spell of CALMING. she draws her hooded gaze away from him, and steps back as she murmurs in soft, g e n u i n e tones of lament.
❝ …i am sorry, however, that you do, in fact, find it so. ❞
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki draws back by the left shoulder as if Sylvana has struck out at him. The gesture has all the jointless grace of a recoiling adder sliding into murky waters from which to better apprehend its assailant. It becomes clearer by the minute that this so-called archmage has, by reticence alone, provoked him to display no inconsequential quantity of his magic, its nature, his origins and youth, his implicitly BENTHIC social caste, and perhaps the most vulnerable u n c l e a n n e s s that he could ever ashamedly hope to conceal.
Be it by magic or by some strange compelling quality of a mirror into which one idly confides … she has undone all his secrets … .
So she is TOO DANGEROUS. She is too dangerous to risk the temptation of new knowledge. Yes, and even too dangerous to risk the paradisiac discovery of an entire COMMUNITY of fellow Seidhr Masters.
He mourns this, even as his lip curls.
“Well, ‘Witch of Winterhold,’ your conveniently advantageous position, one of PROTECTOR to INNOCENTS, prevents us from sharing a level playing field. You conceal all, but expect me never to dissemble. Eheh. If there is anything that I have learned in a not terribly pleasant lifetime, it’s that only a fool seeks his prize through venues of inequity. A pity. I shall regret this lost opportunity. Good evening.”
I would rather die ignorant than ever again be ensnared by one who LOOKS DOWN UPON ME.
MY brother. MINE. MINEto exalt or destroy. MINEto protect, mine to revere. MINE from whom to elicit merriment, gods willing, round the clock. M I N E.
Loki speaks before thinking, before examining; just as Thor grows raw with the violence within him and strives with all his might to counter it with logic, so too does the Trickster wade out into the deep still waters of his emotions and FREE the tenderer ones to the surface. Affection, lined with veracity, spills from pale, faintly trembling lips:
“Your presence is never an offense to me. Fool, you are my very favorite person.”
Loki realizes what a naked remark he has made, to an already frenzied elder sibling. The same dazzling dust sprays across his vision. Only it’s not stars, it’s SNOW. An endless tundra of unforgiving snow. That same thing that frightened him so inexplicably as a small toddler, and sent him burrowing in fear against Thor in their bunker.
He recognizes in a single moment of abject epiphany that those riveting cobalt eyes register only prey. Loki’s own jade stare is level. But it is wounded to his very depths.
He waits on the ledge. He could teleport to safety at any moment. But he wants to gauge whether Thor will truly lay hands on him, and tear into his fair flesh, for a single act of jest. FAILURE, too, immobilizes him. Such benign mischief ordinarily sends Thor roaring at the sky in joy. But Loki, who is clever and adaptable, shuld have known better than to probe an injured beast with the same stick that ordinarily tickles. And oh, downward does he spiral.
I am a fool, and I have DISAPPOINTEDmy brother. My one advocate and friend. Is this why only Thor feels fondly toward me?
Is my BASIC NATURE why I am ALONE?
Loki climbs inside to safety, eyes moist. He watches Thor continue to struggle, strangely enrapt; the world itself loses equilibrium when Thor is unwell. The Trickster is breathless. And when Thor continues to curl inward, Loki recognizes it as a mercy.
“I believe it is my company that is repugnant.”
Always so willing to disavow himself. Always tripping over himself to exonerate his brother at his own expense. Loki will later feel the weight of this unwise compulsion and it will calcify into the bitter resentment that brings about his downfall. But for now … . he will jump out the window himself if it will make Thor SMILE again.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
Loki is upset. That is a state of affairs that can never be allowed to persist, no matter the cause.
Loki is in tears. Thor is his big brother. He is supposed to make it so that Loki never has cause. He is supposed to keep him safe from the cruel things in the world. He is not supposed to be one of them.
He is Loki’s favorite person, and yet he is an unforgivable brute.
“Brother…”
Everything about Loki’s demeanor in that moment proves to be what it takes to finish digging through the fog in Thor’s head. It’s still an effort, to remain here and present and thinking, and he thinks he might only be capable of that much because he’s teetering on the edge of his own inevitable downward spiral. It’s a mindset made all the worse by the few stray flakes of snow that follow Loki in from the outside world.
This entire affair was futile from the start, then. Winter is here, and there is nowhere left to hide.
For a moment, Thor stares at what’s visible of the sky through the window as though it’s personally betrayed him.
He wishes he hadn’t gotten angry. He wishes he didn’t still feel angry, but the rush of it has left trails of molten emotion through his veins that are proving damnably slow to cool. Even so, Thor closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath, and then another, of the cold night air, and tries to imagine himself cooling from the inside anyway. He uncurls one hand in an almost painfully slow effort and moves it to Mjolnir’s handle – but not to ready the hammer, only to curl his fingers around it instead for a moment, to brush against the leather strap, in a nervous habit Thor sometimes has, as though he’s afraid to feel it growing heavier in that very moment.
Because he has been most unworthy, just now. If he could go back in time even only a few moments, he would laugh, if only to keep Loki from looking so lost and sad. His brother only wanted to play, and wasn’t it for the very same reason that Thor had dragged him from his bed?
Thor finally manages to look back at Loki, then. His bearing is that of a wounded dog that, even in its continued distress, recognizes that it is wrong to bite the hand that reaches out in solace.
“Don’t.” He shakes his head, repeating the words almost as much as a command to himself as a plea to his brother. “Don’t. You saved me a walk that would only have ended in bitter disappointment and wasted time. That is hardly a repugnant thing.”
Thor steps nearer and, perhaps a little more heedless of Loki’s wishes and space than he might otherwise be, pulls him into a careful hug. Still, though restless, agitated energy thrums through his body, the grip itself is gentle enough to hold fractured eggshells without breaking them. And the intentions are only good.
“You are my very favorite person, too, Loki. Always.” Even now, perhaps especially now, he means that – wholeheartedly and sincerely – even though his voice remains the rumble of storms, safely distant. “And I am sorry. Now that I think back, I have not slept in some long while. Perhaps that is why I have been left such a clumsy brute.”
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki unearths loose skin savagely from a callus on his left palm. He digs at it unconsciously, as if doing so might dig up and cast aside whatever futile insufficiency has led the pair to this exhausted moment. The years on the precarious side of Odin’s favor have conditioned him to reticent observation: he is still and silent and wary, eyes glassy and unblinking, a perfectly regal statue, somehow physically shrinking despite his impeccable posture. Fingers pick and PICK at the imperfections in the hand that will one day show him blue skin and a lifetime of deceits.
He neither confirms nor denies Thor’s claims until his brother takes incentive, steps toward and embraces him.
It’s then that Loki needs no prompting to cling on as if to prevent forfeiting his soul. Fingers clutch fists full of tunic. The careful largeness of Thor is at the center of all of Loki’s earliest memories, and implicitly calms him.
“Please don’t be sad, brother. I can forge an illusive meadow out there for us. I can bring you all manner of entertainment. With my … with my ‘tricks,’ you know, that mother taught me. Why not spar in the dark, hm? Who cares if it’s cold? Enough … enough exertion and you’ll be a furnace… yes?”
All this, mumbled into Thor’s shirt as he’s tightly grasped.
Here, let me make you further offerings. Here, I can still fix everything. Need me. Trust me. APPROVE of my efforts. I can still grant you what you ask.
( NEED me … ! )
A pause, and Loki pulls back to examine Thor closely, to discern whether any of his suggestions have struck a chord. He does not realize that his mask of serene indifference has been so thoroughly shattered, to reveal desperation.
“It’ll be alright, brother, I promise.”
I am your favorite person, too. Good, good …GOOD … ! Then I shall make that worth your while, yes, I … !
“What say you, hm?”
To BELONG to someone is a GIFT that cannot be too oft exalted, to a being forever questioning its own right to exist. A being furtive, scurrying along the periphery of golden gods who rage and laugh and incur incessant celebration.
Tonight, and always, Loki BELONGS to Thor.
Even when the time will come that he DESPISES knowing it.
So it was as he suspected, in his worst and lowest moments. A million
mistakes, a million little wounds, all culminating in the moment that
still haunted Thor’s nightmares – a hand, letting go of his.
And
he found that there was very little he could think to say in his own
defense, in the face of this explanation that had come far too late. You should not have played that trick, he could say, but he would truly have made a very poor King. You should have told me, he could say, but fear could drive a man to otherwise incomprehensible lengths.
He could tell Loki how Thor had raged at both their parents, on being told the truth, too late – you let us hear those stories, and oh, Norns, and you let me say those things to him! But what good would that do now?
He
had learned better, he had learned enough to look back and see and
regret and understand why he regretted. But he had learned too slowly,
understood too late –
always,
always,
too late.
A million little moments where things might have gone a different way, and as Thor looked up at Loki – so worn, so tired – his eyes held the regret that every one had passed them by. Thor wanted nothing more than to pull his brother close and let him fall safely apart, and maybe he would weather this storm and come out a little more whole for it. Maybe they could once again be happy.
For a moment, he almost did. His fingers twitched with the urge, his arm shifted with the beginning of it, because Thor had never wanted so much in his life.
There
was precious little Thor could think to say in his own defense. But this
stopped being about his own defense much too long ago.
“That town
did not deserve your ire.” Puente Antiguo remained little more than a
ghost town, a shell set up around some lonely SHIELD research
facilities.
“The Earth did not deserve your ire.” New York was still rebuilding, and Loki’s invasion had paved the way for HYDRA, for Ultron…
“You call the Jotun your mother people, and yet you attempted to annihilate them all.”
Laboriously, shoulders bowed with the weight of duty, Thor pushed himself to his feet, the better to look his brother in the eye, perhaps for the first time in years as equals. His eyes held regret, but his expression was resolute. Around them, the storm had abated – fat, scattered drops splashing against the leaves, the thunder quiet, the lightning distant and brief.
“If your quarrel was truly with me, Loki, there were others ways you might have seen it done. You could have come to me in the night and cut my throat while I slept, and I think there would still have been less harm done.”
His tone held no accusation. It didn’t hold much of anything, really. There was nothing to accuse. There were only facts to state. Thor thought he was at least closer to understanding. With time to process, he might even have been able to offer something like forgiveness.
But this had stopped being just about the two of them much too long ago. With a long, tired sigh, he looked away, even looked ashamed for a moment, but knew what he had to say next.
“You should not be here. I should not have brought you here. For that, brother, you have my apologies.
But you must leave this world, now, before your presence is noticed by someone else.”
Because if they stood together, Loki would be bound and gagged and silenced once more, would be shut away in shadow to be safely forgotten about. It would be SHIELD, or it would be Asgard, and Thor would understand why even as he would argue for mercy.
It was always Loki who left Thor wishing that he could close off his heart. And it was always Loki who left him unable to. He was only capable of remaining so stoic for so long, and Thor could feel his resolve crumbling like ruined stone, could feel the threat of hopeless, helpless tears in his eyes.
“I did not wish you leave you there, Loki.” Not on Svartalfheim, not forgotten and cast aside after he had done so much. “And I will not be your downfall now. Not more than I already have been.”
◣♛◢ —- –
Thor stepped toward Loki, and the younger Asgardian’s pupils dilated, swallowing the jade of his irises. Feral and afraid, overstimulated and under-rested, he jumped back and drew his dagger again.
“N-no …! “ he yelped, and then again, with ferocity, he barked, “NO.”
It was not even that Loki did not crave his only remaining family’s affection. Rather, it was that Loki had so long been denied the power to SAY no, and be RESPECTED for asserting himself: his needs, and his boundaries. Now it was sacred unto him that Thor observe these coveted things. Thor seemed to notice; he fell still, the arm that had moved falling inert. But he continued to speak.
A gasp bereft of any remaining strength escaped Loki.
And I love you still.
The words were a tourniquet, and the mercurial Trickster God whose ire had been unslaked by years of carnage now felt a flame inside him extinguish. A lick of water, two wet fingertips, pressed inside his soul and simply doused it.
And though his mind hummed with the locust din of INDIGNATION, he was now willing to l i s t e n .
“Nay, brother, my quarrel was not with you, but with ODIN–”
It had begun that way, but it wasn’t entirely true. In his darkest hour, Loki resented Thor for existing. He bit his tongue and tucked his chin into his chest, and let his eyes fall closed as he pondered the litany of wrongdoings that his brother had recited. He had the presence of mind to smile; it reminded him of when they were small boys, once again, as their every interaction now did–every insignificant choice of word or gesture was saturated with many rich years of memories. It reminded him of when they were seven or eight years old, and Odin had charged them with memorizing complicated verse of Bor’s many “valorous” deeds. Loki had no trouble mastering the material, but Thor stumbled over the words on the paper, and rote memorization elided him. So when the time came for Thor’s recitation to Odin, at a feast table where many important diplomats sat. Loki scurried under the table unseen and fed Thor the verses that he could not recollect. Thor had been infinitely grateful.
And Thor had received all the applause.
But Loki had felt he mattered, and Loki had been content in shadow, then.
He paid homage to those memories when his eyes opened again, moist and red and strained, and he began to quake violently, because what he was about to confess, by the mores of their homeland … the VULGAR VULNERABILITY of a VICTIM … was repulsive. Or so Loki thought.
“Understand … I mean not … to make excuses …well, perhaps I do …but … They did things to me … out there. They DID things to me. The creatures I claimed to fieldmarshal. And their leader. If I speak his name, you will be in as much danger of his wrath as I. And if you try to make me, I SHALL flee, and you will NEVER find me. But… .something tells me … that you have already learned his identity. He performed many … tests … upon me. He used me to understand our people. He deprived and starved me … subjected me to experiments, to test my threshold of tolerance in the field, and he made me believe my worst suspicions about our home and people… the better, I now suspect, to manipulate me into doing his work. I understand that the choices I made were mine alone … ”
Fool, S T O P . You are granting him every single piece of information that may be used in his arsenal to DESTROY you. No. Stop. SHUT UP. Thor is not a master strategist. Thor is Thor, a great candid affectionate LUMMOX. That has always been your favorite thing about him: he never conceals anything. Neither is Asgard’s greatest warrior SAFE: for Thor is not tame, but he is transparent, and he MEANS WELL. What about you, who are neither Odinson nor Laufeyson? Frigguson: what about you?
“I understand, but I am not yet ready to recant the words, the deeds, that I performed upon Jotunheim, and Midgard, for my reasons were and are still borne of convictions I hold. Yet still, things were done to me … that I can never sponge out from under my SKIN . . . and I have never felt more disgusting… “
(( I WANT MY INNOCENCE BACK!!! ))
“ … but for the words that you spoke to me just now, and so, I … I thank you. For that. I THANK you.”
Thor granted Loki exit without struggle. And Loki nodded gratefully. The glamour of a teleportation spell was already encasing his body, green and gold in hue, when he spoke again.
“Brother. Do you remember what I told you never to doubt?”
“It’s still true.”
And then he was gone.
Although at times I’m envious, never doubt that I love you.
And he hadn’t. He never had, much as he might have sometimes tried or wished he could. At heart, it was those very words that had always kept his heart open, always left one small, treacherous part of him hoping. Somehow, he’d known even then, as they’d stood together there in the hallway, that if Loki had ever spoken any honest words to him at all, it had been those. It was as though the part of him that was still a child had merely been waiting for Loki to turn around and laugh and say it was all a joke, brother, I was only teasing you.
He hadn’t gotten that, of course, because life was never so simple and never so kind. But the reminder was confirmation that his hopes nevertheless hadn’t been entirely in vain.
And so Thor swayed where he stood, the tears already falling, as Loki faded from view. Once he had, Thor slumped on his knees to the muddy ground once more like a puppet with its strings cut, slumped forward like a tree in the wind with his arms wrapped around his stomach as though to hold his foolish, bleeding soul inside.
And he wept.
If there were any words in the torrent of emotion and misery, they were a prayer – maybe to the Norns who had thus far been so cruel, perhaps to Loki himself, a plea to remember:
Be safe, be safe, be safe.
Thor was aware of how he was perceived by the people of Earth, how he was perceived by his friends. To so many mortals, he remained a god among men. To his friends, he was a beacon of strength and valor. As long as he smiled, as long as he jested along with them, they knew that all was well, that there was nothing to truly fear.
So he worked a little harder to keep smiling. None of them knew that Loki had died, and so none of them knew that Mother had died.
The only ones who knew were Jane Foster, Erik Selvig, and Darcy Lewis. After Selvig’s response to the news, the only one to know how Thormourned had been Jane, and he’d never told another soul why he might have caused. He couldn’t have born the sight of relief a second time in the eyes of someone he otherwise trusted. She soothed him through the bad dreams, she made him tea when the misery and loss crept up on Thor’s heart and left him feeling motionless and numb, she leaned against him whenever he found himself staring at nothing, thinking back, and he knew she understood, and that was enough.
Jane was not there, now. Thor was alone with his thoughts, but they were thoughts that were crystallizing on points never previously understood, information never known, avenues never investigated quite thoroughly enough.
He’d been close. He’d been so close. One more regret among many.
But no longer.
Who controls the would-be king?
Yes, Thor thought he knew. During his own investigation in the stars beyond Yggdrassil, there was one name he had heard, many times, always in a hushed and frightened whisper. Always as the sort of man who wouldn’t hesitate, to do what Loki said had been done to him.
“Thanos,” Thor growled, even if there was no one but the storm to hear him. “One day soon, I will have words with thee.”
“HE is ALWAYS here. HE is INSIDE me–HE was, and is, and ever shall be, the one whopulled out my insides and used them for his own gain. Not your triune god, but one WORSE than ODIN. HE made me so willing to FORCE men like you to hate me. You didn’t want to, but I have made y–”
Loki didn’t anticipate the kick; it was a crushing explosion of blinding lights before his eyes, an eruption of ash, and he went down hard, but as he dropped, instinct beyond conscious cognition kicked in, and his blade lashed out. It shredded skin, the same consistency as slicing through a peach. Blood, not Loki’s own, splattered on his cheek–the usual baptism in his own unholiness–and he WAILED a laugh.
“GO ON, then! I’ll NOT kill you! I know a better form of recompense that’ll slake us BOTH! Kill ME! Come. You know you LONG for it!”
He couldn’t comprehend the workings of his body; the pain aroused him, but it was not real pleasure, it was self- punitive, it was gluttonous masochism. Every inch of him wanted to fuck that voice so rough and raw that filled his ears with its scorn; yes, good, keep going, make me feel that I am filth, that I am undeserving: better than dangling “worthiness” forever overhead and lying that you have hope of any goodness in me. Make me in the image of the monster that you need to uphold your VIRTUOUSdichotomies. Make me the King David to your RIGHTEOUSUriah, Christian, make me the CAUTIONARY TALEagainst which you struggle to achieve some higher standard. UGLY! EFFEMINATE! GENDERLESS! BLUE-SKINNED! DIRTY! SUBHUMAN! FRAIL! PUNY! BASTARD! …who “HAD THE CHOICE” to “SAVE HIMSELF,” but NEVER, oh, NEVER, the frame of reference, the paradigm, the advocacy, to RECOGNIZE that choice!
(( GODS, GODS!!!! FOR GODS’ SAKES, KILL ME ALREADY!!! ))
“I’ll let you. I’ll let you without hesitation. Come, be a dirty sinner like me, satisfy your lust to kill. Break your cardinal rule. Behead the serpent. And put a beast that let thousands die out of its misery.”
The knife hit Matt’s flesh; pain burst in his upper thigh. He went down hard and landed on the injury with a gasp.
“Nnnhhh….”
( … HIS EYES WOULD GO DEAD… )
Gracelessly, he forced himself up and launched at Loki again.
( … AND THE OTHER GUY, HE’D SEE THAT LOOK… )
He pounded in, one fist after the other. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, but he lost all sense of time.
( … MY DAD, HE’D CATCH HIM AND TRAP HIM IN A CORNER… LET THE DEVIL OUT. )
At some point the knee of his slashed leg gave out, causing him to fall forward into the blows. Until then, the roaring in his ears had drowned Loki out. Now, suddenly, he heard what he was being asked to do.
Matt’s stomach turned, and he recoiled — his fists shocked into opening, hands still outstretched.
“NO,” he croaked. He half-staggered back, half-crouched over his crumpled leg.
You think you know what will SATISFY me, but IF that’s the end of your misery, it’s the beginning ofMY HELL! YOU DON’T KNOW ME AT ALL.
“Don’t you understand? I don’t need a scapegoat! I don’t want you dead!”
( What DO you want, Matthew Murdock? )
He stood shaking with anger, blood running down his leg and dripping from his chin. He wanted justice, and all Loki could offer right now was more blood.
“You can call yourself a god, but you’re as HUMAN as I AM, and you don’t GET to DAMN ME more than I already have!”
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki blocked each of Matt’s blows with pitiful ease, but in the back of his twisted mind, he granted the mortal, he had more endurance than any other Midgardian Loki had faced: including all of the Avengers combined.
The dullness of a severed serpent head greeted Loki, calm and dead and black-brown in the center of a flushed face contorted with rage.
Loki had never in his life seen anything more beautiful.
He waited until the vigilante had exhausted himself, then shoved Matt savagely off and onto the floor.
“Perhaps I am. But I am already under your skin. Even if I cannot compel you to damn yourself today, it’s TOO LATE. You will think on me with RAGE and CONSTERNATION, you will think on how I yet exist in this universe, ALIVE, having sinned in every way you find REPUGNANT and one day, your will shall BREAK, you SILLY BOY.”
So it was as he suspected, in his worst and lowest moments. A million
mistakes, a million little wounds, all culminating in the moment that
still haunted Thor’s nightmares – a hand, letting go of his.
And
he found that there was very little he could think to say in his own
defense, in the face of this explanation that had come far too late. You should not have played that trick, he could say, but he would truly have made a very poor King. You should have told me, he could say, but fear could drive a man to otherwise incomprehensible lengths.
He could tell Loki how Thor had raged at both their parents, on being told the truth, too late – you let us hear those stories, and oh, Norns, and you let me say those things to him! But what good would that do now?
He
had learned better, he had learned enough to look back and see and
regret and understand why he regretted. But he had learned too slowly,
understood too late –
always,
always,
too late.
A million little moments where things might have gone a different way, and as Thor looked up at Loki – so worn, so tired – his eyes held the regret that every one had passed them by. Thor wanted nothing more than to pull his brother close and let him fall safely apart, and maybe he would weather this storm and come out a little more whole for it. Maybe they could once again be happy.
For a moment, he almost did. His fingers twitched with the urge, his arm shifted with the beginning of it, because Thor had never wanted so much in his life.
There
was precious little Thor could think to say in his own defense. But this
stopped being about his own defense much too long ago.
“That town
did not deserve your ire.” Puente Antiguo remained little more than a
ghost town, a shell set up around some lonely SHIELD research
facilities.
“The Earth did not deserve your ire.” New York was still rebuilding, and Loki’s invasion had paved the way for HYDRA, for Ultron…
“You call the Jotun your mother people, and yet you attempted to annihilate them all.”
Laboriously, shoulders bowed with the weight of duty, Thor pushed himself to his feet, the better to look his brother in the eye, perhaps for the first time in years as equals. His eyes held regret, but his expression was resolute. Around them, the storm had abated – fat, scattered drops splashing against the leaves, the thunder quiet, the lightning distant and brief.
“If your quarrel was truly with me, Loki, there were others ways you might have seen it done. You could have come to me in the night and cut my throat while I slept, and I think there would still have been less harm done.”
His tone held no accusation. It didn’t hold much of anything, really. There was nothing to accuse. There were only facts to state. Thor thought he was at least closer to understanding. With time to process, he might even have been able to offer something like forgiveness.
But this had stopped being just about the two of them much too long ago. With a long, tired sigh, he looked away, even looked ashamed for a moment, but knew what he had to say next.
“You should not be here. I should not have brought you here. For that, brother, you have my apologies.
But you must leave this world, now, before your presence is noticed by someone else.”
Because if they stood together, Loki would be bound and gagged and silenced once more, would be shut away in shadow to be safely forgotten about. It would be SHIELD, or it would be Asgard, and Thor would understand why even as he would argue for mercy.
It was always Loki who left Thor wishing that he could close off his heart. And it was always Loki who left him unable to. He was only capable of remaining so stoic for so long, and Thor could feel his resolve crumbling like ruined stone, could feel the threat of hopeless, helpless tears in his eyes.
“I did not wish you leave you there, Loki.” Not on Svartalfheim, not forgotten and cast aside after he had done so much. “And I will not be your downfall now. Not more than I already have been.”
◣♛◢ —- –
Thor stepped toward Loki, and the younger Asgardian’s pupils dilated, swallowing the jade of his irises. Feral and afraid, overstimulated and under-rested, he jumped back and drew his dagger again.
“N-no …! “ he yelped, and then again, with ferocity, he barked, “NO.”
It was not even that Loki did not crave his only remaining family’s affection. Rather, it was that Loki had so long been denied the power to SAY no, and be RESPECTED for asserting himself: his needs, and his boundaries. Now it was sacred unto him that Thor observe these coveted things. Thor seemed to notice; he fell still, the arm that had moved falling inert. But he continued to speak.
A gasp bereft of any remaining strength escaped Loki.
And I love you still.
The words were a tourniquet, and the mercurial Trickster God whose ire had been unslaked by years of carnage now felt a flame inside him extinguish. A lick of water, two wet fingertips, pressed inside his soul and simply doused it.
And though his mind hummed with the locust din of INDIGNATION, he was now willing to l i s t e n .
“Nay, brother, my quarrel was not with you, but with ODIN–”
It had begun that way, but it wasn’t entirely true. In his darkest hour, Loki resented Thor for existing. He bit his tongue and tucked his chin into his chest, and let his eyes fall closed as he pondered the litany of wrongdoings that his brother had recited. He had the presence of mind to smile; it reminded him of when they were small boys, once again, as their every interaction now did–every insignificant choice of word or gesture was saturated with many rich years of memories. It reminded him of when they were seven or eight years old, and Odin had charged them with memorizing complicated verse of Bor’s many “valorous” deeds. Loki had no trouble mastering the material, but Thor stumbled over the words on the paper, and rote memorization elided him. So when the time came for Thor’s recitation to Odin, at a feast table where many important diplomats sat. Loki scurried under the table unseen and fed Thor the verses that he could not recollect. Thor had been infinitely grateful.
And Thor had received all the applause.
But Loki had felt he mattered, and Loki had been content in shadow, then.
He paid homage to those memories when his eyes opened again, moist and red and strained, and he began to quake violently, because what he was about to confess, by the mores of their homeland … the VULGAR VULNERABILITY of a VICTIM … was repulsive. Or so Loki thought.
“Understand … I mean not … to make excuses …well, perhaps I do …but … They did things to me … out there. They DID things to me. The creatures I claimed to fieldmarshal. And their leader. If I speak his name, you will be in as much danger of his wrath as I. And if you try to make me, I SHALL flee, and you will NEVER find me. But… .something tells me … that you have already learned his identity. He performed many … tests … upon me. He used me to understand our people. He deprived and starved me … subjected me to experiments, to test my threshold of tolerance in the field, and he made me believe my worst suspicions about our home and people… the better, I now suspect, to manipulate me into doing his work. I understand that the choices I made were mine alone … ”
Fool, S T O P . You are granting him every single piece of information that may be used in his arsenal to DESTROY you. No. Stop. SHUT UP. Thor is not a master strategist. Thor is Thor, a great candid affectionate LUMMOX. That has always been your favorite thing about him: he never conceals anything. Neither is Asgard’s greatest warrior SAFE: for Thor is not tame, but he is transparent, and he MEANS WELL. What about you, who are neither Odinson nor Laufeyson? Frigguson: what about you?
“I understand, but I am not yet ready to recant the words, the deeds, that I performed upon Jotunheim, and Midgard, for my reasons were and are still borne of convictions I hold. Yet still, things were done to me … that I can never sponge out from under my SKIN . . . and I have never felt more disgusting… “
(( I WANT MY INNOCENCE BACK!!! ))
“ … but for the words that you spoke to me just now, and so, I … I thank you. For that. I THANK you.”
Thor granted Loki exit without struggle. And Loki nodded gratefully. The glamour of a teleportation spell was already encasing his body, green and gold in hue, when he spoke again.
“Brother. Do you remember what I told you never to doubt?”
Loki, a being of liminal nature, an in-between, a defier of dichotomies and singular selves, is in FLUX. His appearance shifts as though his visage itself is made of nothing more substantial than sand and smoke. Facial features change, subtly and explicitly. Eye color flickers from green to red and back. His gender slides female, and that is when she registers Thor’s justifications. They are GOOD and TRUE, the mournful expressions of a brother who has ever been generous advocate and faithful ally to those who do not belong, but Loki is in too much PAIN to believe them.
“In VALHALLA!” she shrieks. “Do you REALLY think I could ever HOPE to count among the glorious fallen warriors of Asgard? I am a THING, brother! I am a SORDID THING, blue of skin, filthy of bloodline, ABANDONED by one father only to be played like a PUPPET by another, an unwanted RUNT BASTARD capable of nothing but contamination and murder! I’ve TRIED to be what you and mama wanted me to be, I’ve TRIED to be what that man I called father was… .! I have loved you all with a rigged deck of cards as my inheritance … ! And I know why … I know. You don’t have to conceal it.”
Gender reverts to male, and skin, to deepest cobalt blue.
“I know that this is why.”
In the rain that’s transformed from violent to soft, furious to mournful, the concentric scars raised along Loki’s Jotun skin create irrigated rivulets for the water to trail down.
He watches his brother collapsed there in his own true element, torn, anguished, striving to yield to savage fratricidal impulses; and Loki KNOWS Thor, better than Thor knows himself { it goes both ways ! }, and Loki can read Thor’s mind. And he flashes a fanged grimace, teeth still stained red-brown, and he considers the same crime. And with the same cold stone-in-the-belly certainty, he knows he can’t do it.
Loki kneels too: { I only ever wanted to be your equal }.
“ … . I would never laugh at that.”
It comes, then, the answer to Thor’s initial question, his infuriated greeting.
“I would never laugh at you mourning my presumed death. When I said I was sorry … I meant it. ”
(( With every fiber of my dirty, ruined heart. ))
“Oh, brother. I never wanted to be your downfall.”
(( But here we are. Is it too late? ))
It is perhaps more a commentary on the often-unfortunate mindset of Asgard than it is on Thor, that he has always been comparatively accepting of Loki’s nature. It’s true that he hadn’t seen anything wrong with it – he knows valiant female warriors and valiant male warriors, he has good friends who are both, so why should it diminish his brother to be either or? And of course, Frigga had been able to be there in time to curb any harsh words or mindsets from developing, to answer difficult or unpleasant questions in a way that a child or an often thoughtless young man could at least accept.
But in turn, when they were younger he had seen it more as a curiosity or an interesting trick, like Loki’s ability to disguise himself as any other person that he chose, as opposed to anything truly integral and vital to his sibling’s nature. On Midgard, he is slowly learning better, as he is slowly learning better about a great many things. Too slowly, it often seems, especially now.
“Of course I really think that,” he says, voice ragged and raw, sounding genuinely perplexed for a moment that this, of all things, is where Loki would doubt him. Why wouldn’t he think that? Loki died well, died honorably, in defense of his family and against a vicious monster. What warrior in any song has ever had a better death?
Had he been denied entrance to Valhalla after such an act, Thor would have fought his way to the Golden City himself and pried the damn gates open.
But Loki clearly isn’t done, and Thor realizes he might as well try to hold up a mountain as to stem this tide of words, pouring like blood from a festering wound.
Though it would be a lie – and Thor has never been good at lying, even to himself – to pretend that he didn’t feel a shiver of disquiet, upon seeing Loki adopting that particular skin. Thor only realizes in that moment that he’s never seen him like that. He never knew, until after. Until too late.
But he tightens his fists, straightens his spine, and looks his brother right in his red eyes without flinching. And yet his expression is almost…contrite, as a result of yet another old wound being clawed and gouged to the surface. It’s any sign of disgust or hesitation that Thor wants to hide – he will not give Loki the satisfaction of thinking it’s as simple as that – not any sign of sorrow.
These words, these miserable and self-loathing words that hurt almost as much to hear as they clearly hurt Loki to say, are confirming some of Thor’s worst suspicions. Yet he also seems almost hungry for answers, that he’d never had the chance to seek before, answers that might explain when and why it’s come to this point.
“That is never what it was about. That was never the reason, not for me. I never knew, no one ever said, I…
…Is that why you lied? Is that why you sent the Destroyer down? You feared what I would do, when I learned the circumstances of your birth?”
Thor had wondered himself, how it might have been different if he’d known beforehand. He’d wondered again and again and again how he might have reacted, if Loki had come to him with the truth.
Would he have acted as he should have, with trust and understanding? With rethinking his opinion of the Jotun as more than just a race that didn’t deserve genocide, knowing he had spent his entire life with one held close at his side?
Or with rage at a trick, a deception, a replacement of his real brother with a monster?
The cruelest answers were not always the true ones, but neither were the gentlest.
◣♛◢ —- –
“ … Yes!”
Loki’s emotions betrayed his self-preservation. He bawled this confirmation breathlessly across the damp COLD air at his elder brother.
“ ‘When I’m king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and SLAY THEM ALL!’” he SPITS Thor’s own words back in his face, with his uncanny memory, the memory of one always forced to MONITOR, to WATCH and WAIT and doubt, doubt, doubt. “ ‘Just like you did, father.’ And the night of your coronation! The fact that you would risk your right to the throne to punish my mother race for a prank of mine gone awry … . you only championed the Jotnar later, when it suited you! You only did ANYTHING, for good or ill, when it SUITED you! NEVER considering the effects upon me!”
He dared draw closer to Thor, nearly hungered for his violent embrace, nearly lusted to be punished, even as he lunglessly pled his case.
“I was consumed alive with anxiety from the moment that thing in Jotunheim touched my arm and it turned blue, but you didn’t notice. You were too busy arguing with our father about his follies. And you’re sincerely SURPRISED that I’m afraid to trust your overtures of good faith? Brother! All I have wanted of you since the moment that man let me fall into a wormhole was that you be better than he was.”
The grotesque animations of his body, too-thin, too-pale, slowed. They grew gentler, as Loki fell very still, and studied Thor’s features. Whatever he saw, it granted him h o p e . Thor had seriously pondered the dilemma at hand, even at the height of his berserker fury, and Thor had figured this out halfway to the destination point by himself. Loki felt, suddenly, incapacitated by euphoric POTENTIAL. Maybe, maybe … !
“Oh gods, brother. Please don’t rebuke me now. Not now, when you have learned to really look, and really see. All that I did, I thought necessary, to not be further … “
(( E r a s e d . ))
All words long since expended, Loki lickec the blood on his teeth, and grimaced. Yet he refused to avert his eyes, or yield, just yet.
“I know that I am not the Vision, nor am I your friend the Captain. I cannot raise a magic hammer forged by Odin to prove my insufficiency. I cannot play at heroism. But you loved me once… “
(( You NEEDED me once. ))
“We don’t need him. We don’t need them.”
We two are lifetime comrades, two halves of a whole entity, starkly opposing complements in a gestalt. We two are boys charging down a cobblestone torchlit hallway, happy. { Happy. }
Don’t make me burn myself down so that I can grasp at that happiness again.
So Loki welcomes the stormthat has cast him a lifelong shadow and made a womb for his every sorrow. He welcomes the reckoning with the being from whose rib he is split, who DEFINES him even when he LOATHES and FEARS that soul forged from the heart of the IRATE STARS. That perfect GOLDEN soul whom he has ever loved and admired, and never deserved.
Reverence: it’s reverence Loki exhibits first, as he tilts back his chin, and spreads wide his arms, and lets the violently pounding rain SOAK him.
Yes, big brother. I am here. { I am with you. } COME.
The impact, be it intentional or accidental, is brutal. Thor’s fist meets Loki’s lips, and the Trickster’s jaw cracks in protest. Teeth drop from his shattered mouth. He reels, stunned, and then he laughs, because sometimes a FAMILIAR MISERY is preferable to HOPE of RECOVERY.
Loki squirms, and strives to dissolve at the molecular level, to teleport to safety, but Thor seizes his scruff and drags him to an unpopulated park in Old New York. He continues to cackle; it’s a hard sound, like the tongues of flame slowly devouring the wood in an October bonfire. He chokes and falls silent as Thor tosses him a distance away, and rails accusations at him.
Loki scrambles to his feet and draws his dagger. Slick hair clings to his scalp and curtains his eyes. He looks like a drowned ghost, a fury, a selkie, a wraith. But something in those eyes full of malice bears the frustration of a forlorn child.
{ I loved you unabashedly for over ten centuries.}
{I was your buffer, your friend, your comfort, your counsel.}
{All that I wanted was a voice unmuted by yours. }
{All i wanted was that our FATHER not place us at ODDS.}
{ I have always been staring at your BACK.}
{ You left me. You left me. YOU LEFT ME. } {You always leave me.}
“The corpse that you LEFT to MOULDER in Svartalfheim?!”
Perverse humor, and resignation, turn to a forest fire of ire. Loki charges at Thor unthinkingly, and slices open his cheek with his dagger. He comes at his brother again.
Pay attention. I’M HERE!
He’s so much smaller than his burly, sinewy sibling, but adrenal frenzy makes him a force as his shoulder collides with Thor’s chest. He spins on his heel out of Thor’s path, an eerie replica of Frigga in her battling prime.
I’M HERE! B R O T H E R !!!! S E E ME !!!
I was always here. It was ALWAYS me. Even the part of me that you find disgusting.
“Oh damn it, WHY DO THIS?” he spits, his mouth, seat of all his lies, bleeding with unadulterated TRUTH. Red rivulets from Thor’s blows drizzle down his pale, soaked chin.
“I gave you your happy ending!!! Would you deny me MINE? Of COURSE you would! What is Loki but Thor’s LESSER complement? I gave you the brother who loved you enough that he would, STILL, even NOW, DIE for you, for the woman you cherish, to protect you BOTH! You never ONCE visited me while I rotted inside that cell, but oh, oho! EHEH, once you finally found USE for me, you stomped down to Asgard’s bowels and you told me that you no longer acknowledged me as kin! And I, I, was not ready to loseyoualongside our mother! I did not PLAN to face Kurse, when he beat you down. But when I saw that chance, aye, I GIFTED you the hero’s death that you craved of me! So DON’T pretend that you would have preferred that I live! DON’T PRETEND IT WASN’T MORE CONVENIENT FOR YOU TO REMEMBER ME AN UNCOMPLICATED, EXONERATED, UNPROBLEMATIC MARTYR! Gods know you wouldn’t have reclaimed the memory of your baby brother any other way!”
(( See me. ))
No one would be here to see. He could swing Mjolnir just hard enough and just fast enough and end this burning, twisted spirit that had cost so many lives, that seemed like such a mockery of the brother he had loved and I reached out to you, I tried, and how did you repay me?
A part of him, a shameful and bloody and wounded part, is screaming to do just that. The berserker is rattling the chains he kept it in, here on Earth, with its wonderful, brilliant, and terrifyingly fragile people. The wind is at his back.
No one is left who would blame him, not with Loki trying to tear him to pieces like a rabid, starving dog.
And yet no
no
N O .
This is not the way.
She wouldn’t want us to fight.
A bitter, biting voice in his head chides him – “sentiment“. It comes in Loki’s voice, as so many of his darker thoughts have in recent years. Maybe he’s even painting such an eery resemblance to Mother to deliberately invoke that weakness, damn him, damn him, damn him.
But in many ways, Thor is weak. No matter how many scars Loki leaves on it, his heart will not stop aching – with love, with loss, with rage, it doesn’t matter. It can be so hard to tell the difference.
So he still fights to hurt, as Loki fights to hurt him. There’s no point in pretending that it will ever be any other way. He fights to punish, and indeed, to silence, because:
I couldn’t stand to lose you, either.
Yet he is always the one who does.
“I thought you safe!”
The words are torn from him like the wind, in a wild attempt to do nothing more than stop the torrent of words that always cut more deeply than a blade or the wind ever could.
They’re words he’s never even said aloud to Jane – Jane, the only one who has been there for him to mourn. Because of course he shouldn’t think that way, they are awful, cruel, rotten, unworthy thoughts to have that confirm every fear he’s ever had about himself, and he’s spent too many nights wishing he could carve them out of his head but they’re there, and this is what Loki has reduced him to.
He brings Mjolnir down hard on the sodden earth, sending a shockwave lancing through it that sends the trees to rattling and gravel to skittering down the mountainside, hoping beyond hope just to get Loki away from him for a moment because he can’t breathe, he can’t think, it never ends…
“I thought you safe, in Valhalla…with Mother…I thought that was what you wanted when you saved me!”
◣♛◢ —- –
Loki, a being of liminal nature, an in-between, a defier of dichotomies and singular selves, is in FLUX. His appearance shifts as though his visage itself is made of nothing more substantial than sand and smoke. Facial features change, subtly and explicitly. Eye color flickers from green to red and back. His gender slides female, and that is when she registers Thor’s justifications. They are GOOD and TRUE, the mournful expressions of a brother who has ever been generous advocate and faithful ally to those who do not belong, but Loki is in too much PAIN to believe them.
“In VALHALLA!” she shrieks. “Do you REALLY think I could ever HOPE to count among the glorious fallen warriors of Asgard? I am a THING, brother! I am a SORDID THING, blue of skin, filthy of bloodline, ABANDONED by one father only to be played like a PUPPET by another, an unwanted RUNT BASTARD capable of nothing but contamination and murder! I’ve TRIED to be what you and mama wanted me to be, I’ve TRIED to be what that man I called father was… .! I have loved you all with a rigged deck of cards as my inheritance … ! And I know why … I know. You don’t have to conceal it.”
Gender reverts to male, and skin, to deepest cobalt blue.
“I know that this is why.”
In the rain that’s transformed from violent to soft, furious to mournful, the concentric scars raised along Loki’s Jotun skin create irrigated rivulets for the water to trail down.
He watches his brother collapsed there in his own true element, torn, anguished, striving to yield to savage fratricidal impulses; and Loki KNOWS Thor, better than Thor knows himself { it goes both ways ! }, and Loki can read Thor’s mind. And he flashes a fanged grimace, teeth still stained red-brown, and he considers the same crime. And with the same cold stone-in-the-belly certainty, he knows he can’t do it.
Loki kneels too: { I only ever wanted to be your equal }.
“ … . I would never laugh at that.”
It comes, then, the answer to Thor’s initial question, his infuriated greeting.
“I would never laugh at you mourning my presumed death. When I said I was sorry … I meant it. ”
(( With every fiber of my dirty, ruined heart. ))
“Oh, brother. I never wanted to be your downfall.”
icyxmischief 