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When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried,
Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died,
Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head
phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.
Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair
Can bring me no report of how you fare,
Safe quit of wars, I speed you on your way
Up lonely, glimmering fields to find new day,
Slow-rising, saintless, confident and kind—
Dear, red-faced father God who lit your mind.
-Siegfried Sassoon
***
The guard keeps steady time as they walk through palace, which still bears the scars of battle as sure as any warrior. The air smells of plaster and dust, of the sharp tang of ozone. Any coppery hint of blood is covered by lavendar and rosemary - the servants had scrubbed ruined walls and floor to a shine, however muted.
"Are you sure you would not take your mount, your Highness? It is a long walk yet across the Bifrost."
It is touching, this concern, amidst the aftermath of the attack, and the heavy words imparted in the throne room just minutes before.
"No." They step into the courtyard, but the sunlight fails to warm him. "I think I should not mind the walk. And you?"
The guard turns, blue eyes startled, but the corners of his mouth curl into a smile.
"No, your Highness." The stones beneath their feet give way to the smooth iridescense of the Bifrost. "I should not mind it at all."
***
Heimdall regards him with the same steady gaze which has fallen upon him for thousands of years. But now gold is flecked with a concern Odin would find unbecoming, but today he shall let it pass.
"You intend to travel to Svartalfheim with no other escort save him?"
The guard keeps his silence, but Odin can see the twitch of the man's fingers upon his sword.
"It is a task I must do alone." Odin leans upon his staff, and he cannot tell if it is the weariness of moments, days, or millinnea weighing upon him. "And so I would also command your gaze be elsewhere. Upon the ones who yet live."
"As you wish, your Highness, but do you trust yourself to one mere guard?"
Odin smiles, and he regards the man in question. "Should I have any reason to doubt you?"
Blue eyes crinkle as the guard bows his head. "No, your Highness, unless any are apparent."
***
The ground is ash and the sky smoke, but Svartalfheim may as well be Jotunheim. A desolate waste, made so at his and his father's hands. To save lives and souls in the millions, of course, but the wastes of war cling to him like the dust upon his boots.
"I am sorry for your loss, your Highness." The guard pauses for a moment besides him, his gait loose and long-limbed, stride that of a young man. His next steps are slower, more careful. "For your losses."
"I may be the only one who may grieve Loki, save his brother, but thank you." Odin coughs - the air stings his lungs, but the rattle in his chest is not mere aggravation.
"This may seem to be speaking out of turn, but he was power-hungry, a traitor, and some say he was not even of Asgard." The guard coughs as well. "You have no reason to offer false pleasantries here."
"Aye, he craved the throne, power, recognition, to belong. Was I so different, when I was a young man?" Odin laughs, shaking his head. "When he could not have the first, did he act in a shocking manner? Did he commit horriffic acts? He did, but no misdeed, no crime could keep him from being my son." His smile fades. "I forgot that, sometimes. He should have been by my side, for his mother's funeral. It was cruel, to deny him that."
In the sickly, yellow light he spies a low, broad cairn, a pile of jagged black rocks.
Atop it rests an ashen-colored body, hands folded at the waist, fingers clenched around a small dagger, glinting silver.
"Did you arrange him so?" Odin addresses the guard, who has again bowed his head.
"No. I did not. It was so when I found him." The guard looks up, the slightest of smirks upon his lips. "His brother, I imagine. A foolish sentiment, to offer such a service to a persistent thorn in his side."
Odin leans more heavily upon his staff now, his feet shuffling in the obsidian dust. "They were brothers. Thor may have disobeyed me, but I hope he and Loki did reconcile."
"And perhaps Loki merely turned upon him again."
Odin sees the body more clearly now, and Loki's skin is as turned to stone, like those who fell to the Dark Elf's monsterous touch. These is no mark upon his face, no cuts along his hand, and the only hint of violence is a tear along the side of Loki's armor. It almost seems a carving of his son, dressed in his rainment and carefully laid beneath an indifferent, alien sky.
"If he had, he would not be dead by the hand of a Dark Elf," Odin replies. He stops, and if he reaches out his hand, he could brush Loki's ashen cheek, just as he had brushed a cold, trembling, Jotun-blue cheek those many years ago. "He may have lived in dishonor these past years, but he has died with honor. He has fallen as a son of Asgard."
Odin instead reaches out to lay a hand upon the guard's shoulder. He sees the tears brimming in the man's eyes, sees how his chin clenches and trembles beneath the curl of his beard. "And he returns as a son of Odin."
There is a glimmer of green light, and for a moment Odin's sees Loki's face, pink and hale, before all washes white before his eyes. He waits for the ground, unforgiving and sharp, to meet him, but a pair of strong if trembling hands catch him before he can fall.
***
There are few words. Odin has little breath for them, and Loki, he thinks, knows words are but hollow things. Loki has drawn his head upon his knees, and his fingers brush through his father's hair.
In a few moments, Odin will no longer be Odin. Loki, if he so wishes, no longer has to be Loki. The dead Dark Elf his son enchanted will keep Loki's face thousand of years, certainly long enough for it to join the boats which had borne his mother and her subjects to where Odin now would follow. Odin knew the ruse the moment the guard came before the throne; the spell woven around his son sang to him as it did when his mother first taught it to him.
The light is dim, even when he opens his eyes. A presence draws close, as familar as the spell-weave and as dear. He exhales, heavy and ragged, a prayer to his love, that she shall bear his soul with kindness.
"What....would you have....me tell.....your mother?"
Loki's face blurs and then fades, as all begins to go not dark, but grey, as if an endless twilight envelops him. Something splashes upon his cheeks, warm, salty, and fingers brush tenderly against his cheek.
"Only the love her son should give."