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The single Einherjar guard tells Odin of Loki's death. The All-Father looks at him a long moment, then leans back in his throne, sighing heavily. "A coward's death, I am sure."
"I do not believe so, my liege," the guard says. "The blow was through his chest, not the back; Loki died facing his foe."
"Betrayed before he could betray, more likely," Odin says, watching the guard's eyes narrow. "And unable to defend himself in the last," the All-Father continues to speculate, "for Loki ever believed himself more capable with a blade than he was in truth—"
Out of his eye he sees the guard begin to move, and he could raise Gungnir, cast him back. But Odin does not close his fingers around the spear.
Then the guard's knife is pressed to Odin's throat, his eyes wide and wild. "Shall I show you my prowess?" he hisses.
There may be a moment that the All-Father wishes the blade might pierce him. A moment of weakness wherein he longs to join his beloved, scattered stardust until Ragnarok's wheel turns.
The moment passes, and the dagger still rests against his throat, not drawing blood. Odin dispels Loki's illusion with a twist of his fingers, the guard's visage melting away. Loki's eyes are still wide, still wild; his teeth are clenched in a grin that might as well be a grimace of pain.
"Try another spell," Loki taunts, "try for your spear. See if you can manage either, before I drive this blade home."
Odin gazes at him. "No," he says steadily.
"Do it!" Loki cries.
"I will not raise either against you," Odin says. "I lost my wife; I lost my reason. I will not lose more by my own hand."
"It was your hand," Loki says, "it was your foolishness, that saw her slain. If sooner you had realized the danger, if you had taken care to protect Jane Foster, rather than trusting her to Frigga's compassion—"
"It may be so," Odin says.
Loki's lips bare his teeth further. "Then shall I pass judgment on you, as you passed judgment on me in this very hall?"
"As you will," Odin says, and waits, watching.
Loki's white-knuckled fist spasms around the dagger's hilt. The quivering razor edge scratches a single drop of blood from Odin's throat.
Then Loki screams, an incoherent howl of rage and hurt, and flings the blade aside.
Odin does not mean to act, but when Loki shudders, his arms reach out, as a millennium ago he reached for a blue frost giant cub, howling alone in a shattered temple. He pulls Loki to his chest, holds him close, so that Loki's trembling conceals Odin's own shaking.
"You raised me to this," Loki says, against Odin's shoulder, "you made me this, that I should rule. Do not imprison me again; punishment changes nothing of what I am. You can only unmake me—"
"Or," Odin says, "I can have you do what you were raised for."
Loki shoves him away, snarls savagely, "Do not mock me—!"
"I do not mock," Odin says. "Nor is this as I would have chosen it—but there are few choices now. Your crimes were madness and bloodshed, Loki; so too are mine now. My madness was borne of a different grief and loss, but it is no less dangerous. As I am now, I am not fit to rule the realm. But Thor will not take the throne; I can see that clearly. He has come to know himself too well. Someday yet he may become a man who could be king. But that is not who he is now, and nothing can be done for it.
"But if I cannot sit upon Asgard's throne, and Thor will not, and Fr..." Sorrow catches in Odin's throat; he cannot bring himself to name his wife. "...Then only one remains with the right to bear Gungnir."
"Not the birthright," Loki says, so bitterly that his words could poison, as his own heart was poisoned.
"Not so. You were born a king's son," Odin says, "as well as raised a king's son."
"But not any son now," Loki says. "Only Loki the betrayer, Loki the usurper, Loki the murderer, Loki the mad—who in all of Asgard would stand to see this Loki on the throne, again?"
"None," Odin agrees. "But no one need see Loki on Asgard's throne. Instead they shall be comforted, that Odin All-Father still wisely rules."
Loki's mind burns swift as a wildfire, but he ever is prone to thinking others have but thick frozen ice in their heads; by the widening of his eyes, he did not conceive that Odin had guessed his plan. Then his mouth twists back into its grimacing grin. "You think to trick me into taking your shape; then you'll alert the soldiers, and add treason to the charges against me—"
"Treason was already your aim," Odin says. "And if I wished you executed for it, Heimdall would already be here—I lifted your spell of concealment when I removed your disguise. But I am undoing your attempted crime, by making it instead the king's decree."
Loki laughs, short and sharp. "You would command me, as my king?"
"I would ask it of you, for Asgard, for the realms," Odin says, and he lifts Gungnir, presents the spear to Loki.
Loki does not take it, his piercing eyes still seeking the trap here. "You think yourself too mad to rule, and so hand the realm over to a madman? Don't you fear that I would drown the realm in the blood of vengeance—or do you think my pain and grief does not run as deep as yours?"
"I think," Odin says, "that you have lived longer over that abyss—that you may better realize its darkness and danger. And you as well understand, more than any, the greatest threat to Asgard, to all the realms, even after Thor defeats Malekith."
Loki stiffens, though he takes effort to make his voice indolent and jaded. "I have stolen the Tesseract, slain an extinct Kursed, and faced the justice of Asgard. With Malekith conquered, what more is there for me to fear?"
"That which sent you to the Tesseract," Odin says. "That which seeks it yet. You may not see that power's shape any more clearly than I can now; but you must recognize its shadow."
For a long moment Loki gazes upon him; then he says, slowly, weaving his thoughts into a complete tapestry as he speaks, "So this is the All-Father's plan. Not that you think yourself unworthy of this throne, but that the throne is imperiled. And you can more easily act to save it if the enemy thinks you are sitting complacent upon it, while in truth you'll be studying your foe, plotting schemes against them in safe secret."
Odin nods. "So I intend."
"And meanwhile I am left as decoy, a pawn pretending to be king, poised to be sacrificed when he comes. You are shrewd indeed, All-Father, to have finally found a purpose to put me to."
Odin shakes his head, weary and yet secretly pleased. Loki's cleverness is ever a curse and a delight, to himself as much as anyone; and Odin cannot say how glad he is, that it is not lost to him. "You comprehend everything, Loki, and yet know nothing. Do you believe I have so little trust in you?"
"Trust?" Loki's laugh echoes across the empty throne room. "The infinitely wise All-Father would trust such as me?"
"I would trust in your survival—in your ability to take any advantage and make it ten-fold; in your perception to realize danger, and how to save yourself from it. Asgard will be your best chance of surviving, when the one who casts the shadow comes for you. And where better protected would you be in all the realms, but ensconced on this throne, and all the host of Asgard between you and it?"
Loki's eyes narrow. "The humans have an expression for this. To make me an offer I cannot refuse."
"I would not make it, had I thought you would refuse it," Odin says. He proffers Gungnir once more. "Will you accept it? Sit on the throne which you already claimed as yours, and rule as well as you claim yourself able? Or is that ability only another lie?"
Loki's eyes flare at that challenge, but he still hesitates to take the spear. "You're scheming yet, old man. What other motive have you for this generosity?"
"This burden is no gift, Loki," Odin says. "Even to rule poorly is a challenge; to rule well is, perhaps, beyond any skill..."
"And if I fail to rule even poorly? What damage may I do your precious realms?"
"Not so much, in only a year," Odin says. "Which is all you'll have, now; one year, to prove yourself, before my return. And after a year, perhaps you will accomplish enough to make a new name, to replace Loki the usurper or Loki the murderer. If you seek another motive, look there—you bore my name once, after all, so evil in your name tarnishes mine as well."
"And you would seek to clean it, for your pride. Odin All-Father could not be so unwise as to keep a Jotunn runt and not find use for it." Loki's mouth twists, cynical and angry.
But he reaches out, closes his hands around Gungnir's length and lifts the spear from Odin's hands.
"I'll take this," Loki declares. "I'll prove my purpose beyond any you expected—I'll make it so that when you return and try to reclaim this throne, all Asgard will revolt against you, for want of my rule. You have undid my crime, and so made your own undoing."
Loki waves his hand, casts his illusions on both of them. Frigga taught him well; his imitation is perfect, not even the face Odin sees in a looking glass, but himself as he sees through Huginn and Muninn's eyes. The illusion over Odin himself is simpler; the Einherjar's armor is easily emulated, and the face is one of Loki's own crafting.
It will fool anyone but Heimdall—and Loki might yet have found a way to trick even the watchman's golden eyes. Though it's unnecessary now. Heimdall did not favor this plan of the All-Father's; but having committed sedition of his own, he had not the position to contradict it.
"Go, then," Loki says, imperiously, in Odin's own voice. "Learn what you will of Asgard's—of our foe."
"As you command, All-Father," Odin says, making his accent thick and common. He bows his head, but raises his eyes, one illusory and one real, to glimpse the flash of amusement cross Loki's disguised face, too fleeting for anyone but Odin himself to see.
Odin turns away before Loki can look at his own face, and possibly see there the motive Odin still hides from him.
He cannot have Loki discern that purpose. Loki is still too angry now, so that he might deny it out of spite, and Asgard could not afford that—which Loki himself would come to realize, but perhaps not in time.
Eventually he will understand, Odin thinks, as he marches from the throne room, under Loki's single uncovered eye. He does not now because he thinks of Odin's motives as complex, impenetrable and involved as his own, the ever-shifting web of lies and hidden truth which Loki spins about himself with every move he makes.
He is not entirely wrong; but in unraveling the intricate, he misses the most simple reason—that Odin is doing this because Loki left him no other choice. Even if there were no peril for Odin to explore. Because this is the only way that even the All-Father's eye can see, that Loki might yet prove himself worthy of Asgard's throne.
And what does any father want, but to see his son succeed where he has failed?