Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Loki opens his eyes to the gleaming spires of the Great Hall.

He and Thor had spent countless hours here playing, chasing one another until their knees were weak and they panted for breath between laughter. Sometimes, when it was only the two of them, when Thor’s idiot friends were blessedly occupied elsewhere, he and Thor would sprawl out on their backs in the very center of the room and look up, up, up, to where Hlidskjalf almost touched the sky. It had seemed to him as if the very stars themselves would tumble down from the velvet night, pierced by the light and majesty of the Aesir. His brother, as beaming and bright as bottled sunshine, would regale him of the tales he had read when they should have been at their studies, of mighty battles and wars fought over lost loves, of the conquering of these very stars by their father.

Now he feels no such pleasure, lying here staring above, only a pain so deep and terrible it takes his breath away. His skin is tight, like the time he fell asleep in the orchard playing with Thor and woke up sunburnt and red, though it feels worse than that, like bees stinging him all over. People, he can see people near him, standing so tall over him, staring down at him, and there’s something strapped over his face, something in his mouth, huge and heavy and weighing down his tongue. When he gags on it and tries to pull it free, heavy chains clamped around his wrists rattle and sing. He can’t remember what’s happened, what has happened, and he shrieks into the metal filling his mouth, yanking at it, choking on it, and the pain in his head spikes so badly that he can’t help it, he vomits and it’s trapped in his throat and going up his nose and then Pabbi is on his knees, cradling Loki’s head in his large hands, commanding, “Calm yourself,” but Loki is choking and Pabbi lifts him up and turns him onto his stomach and the vomit is trapped, it’s trapped and he’s suffocating. One of Pabbi’s warriors crashes down at their side in all his armor and he can feel their hands on the thing over his face, yanking at it, pulling at it, and Mamma is crying, Loki can hear her, but then Pabbi snarls something and the gag is free and Loki vomits and vomits, and it’s red, it’s red like blood and he can’t even cry because he can’t breathe.

It takes a long time for it to stop, and Loki can’t stop jerking and gasping and the blood is everywhere, all over his hands and his front and the floor and Pabbi’s robes, and the warrior is staring at him in horror, and the wail that comes up out of Loki is awful and wretched and out of his control. Pabbi holds Loki’s aching head in the crook of his arm, sitting on the floor of the Great Hall like a commoner, and when he says now, “Calm, my son, it’s over,” the pain starts to lessen and he can finally breathe.

The chains are all over him, so heavy around his arms and legs and shoulders and waist, weighing him down, smothering him, burning him. They feel prickly like sometimes when Loki gets too close to Pabbi’s special shelf in his study, where he kept all the magic things he had collected over so many years. Only the prickliness is the worst it has ever been ever in his whole life, and he is hurting and hurting.

The elves, it must have been the – hadn’t Pabbi told them to stay in the palace while the elves were in Asgard? Thor had said going to the market would be safe but Thor was stupid.

Where is Thor? Where is –

The market. Something happened at the market. His brother isn’t here, and Loki is chained like an animal, caught up in elven magic like a rabbit snared. He can’t remember, only that – that Kieran’s pabbi had the thread they needed for Mamma’s shawl, and Thor said it would be fine if they slipped out for a few hours, but Thor thought everything would be fine, especially if he brought his stupid friends along, as if pimply-faced idiots who hadn’t even started their warrior’s training would be enough to deter a – a robber or kidnapper, or anyone else who wanted to do something to the princes. And Pabbi had said not to stray from the palace, that the elves were mischievous and had their own rules regardless of Asgard’s wishes, and Thor had ignored him and now there is an awful blank in Loki’s memory, but something must have happened, something –

Surely – surely Thor isn’t –

Pabbi looks down upon him with a thousand burdens weighing in his eye, and Mamma is crying like he has never seen her cry, her hands clasped over her mouth, and Loki’s world narrows to a pinprick.

He fights against Pabbi’s hold until the pain is such that the Allfather need only gather him close and murmur into his ear to make the world fall away.

.

Loki dreams of lovely and dreadful things, caught in the peaceful place Pabbi had sent him. He dreams of wheat fields, and a double-wide, neat as a pin. He dreams of bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds and the old hound dog that liked to lick his ankles sometimes and Mama making cupcakes for Thor’s school. Thor would get mad when Mama didn’t let him put the sprinkles on, but it weren’t fair anyway because Thor got to have friends and learn reading and Loki was too little still to go to school, real school and not Church Daycare where Mama took him sometimes when she had to go to her doctor’s appointments. It weren’t fair so Mama let him put on the sprinkles, red ones for the Valentines cupcakes, and they looked like the way her blood did against the shattered glass of the lamp.

Loki is wet between his legs and Daddy is staring at him, but they’re frozen, like ice. There is a man standing behind Loki, long spidery fingers grasping his arms, turning him away from the blood pooling around Mama’s head, from Daddy’s blank eyes.

Loki looks up at the man and sees only a flash of green, green eyes and black stitches before he startles awake with anguish like a stone in his chest, his eyes hot and overflowing into his pillow.

The blanket his mother had made for his seventh name day is tucked over his shoulder, cozy and warm against his cheek, and he burrows against it. The doors leading to the terrace stand open, for all that the sky is gray and rain is plink-plinking against the marble balustrades in a steady downpour. The rain brings with it the smell of greenery and dampness, flowers and moss, and reminds Loki of Mamma’s garden.

Pabbi is standing in the open doorway of the nursery, speaking with someone in the hall. Just this morning his hair was thick and golden, twisted into the complicated plaits he favored and woven with healing and protection beads. Now it falls gray around his wide shoulders, and the braids are different and ever-more complicated, but without the beads that Loki has seen every day of his life. Under the light of Hlidskjalf, Pabbi’s hair had been white as snow.

Hlidskjalf. The chains, the metal that had filled his mouth, the blood sour at the back of his throat. The realization that Thor – that Thor –

Loki has failed in the one task Pabbi ever gave him, the most important task of a second prince: to protect the heir of the kingdom.

Thor, his brother, his best friend, the person he loved more than anyone in this entire world, is dead.

“Loki?” Pabbi says, but Loki is gone, gone, gone.

There is grief, so much grief, in the pull of his father’s mouth when he sits at Loki’s side. The very weight of the world has settled on his shoulders and drawn them low, making him seem so much older than he is, to match the gray of his hair, the lines of his face, the creases at his eye. “My boy,” he says, with more tenderness than Loki can ever remember hearing. “How do you feel?”

He tries to speak and it is but a croak. Pabbi helps him sit up, helps him wrap his hands around the glass of water from his bedside. It is cool and crisp on his tongue and tastes like iron, and it burns like scalding hot fire down his ravaged throat. His nose is running something awful and – and he wonders where Mamma is, wishes for her so desperately that his chin shakes, and Pabbi murmurs, so gently, “What do you remember?”

The acid of his tears blisters his eyes. “I don’t know,” he sobs, grinding his fist to his head where it pulses with pain just above. His fringe is damp with sweat and he feels hot and cold in turns, shudders racing down his spine. “Thor and I went to the market, I know we aren’t – we aren’t to go alone while the elves are here, but we needed flax thread for Mamma’s name day gift, and, and I don’t remember what happened, there is a terrible pain in my head.”

Pabbi brushes his hair back from his brow and Loki turns his face to his father’s palm, holds it there with both hands as if his father’s touch can stop the pain. “I will ask you strange questions. I ask that you answer them with honesty, even if you are afraid.”

Behind his father the warrior dares enter, silently closing the nursery door behind himself with a grace of movement that speaks to his skill. He is enormous, carrying war on his skin as easily as he carries Mjolnir, and Loki knows his mischief has finally gone too far, that he took the wrong path to lead them here to these terrible circumstances.

If the warrior needed Mjolnir, Asgard’s prized relic, to rescue the princes, then all hope is lost.

His father grips his hand tightly and brings their palms entwined to his chest, where beneath his tunic his heart beats strong and sure. “My son. You have seen nine passes of the stars.”

“Please tell me what happened Pabbi,” he sobs. His father flinches and Loki doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what he’s done, and his tears are like the sun, burning his heart and throat and eyes to cinder.

“You have come to know of your seidr, but do not yet wield it.”

It sits beneath his breast, warm and alive and as much a part of him as his heart. His mother’s seidr, green like growing things and one of healing and empathy. Women’s magic, which Loki has tried so desperately to ignore, to hide, to pretend wasn’t as much a part of him as his blood and bones and beating heart.

None could hide from the Allfather.

His father’s gaze has him trapped, as easily as a bird caught in a cage, and he can’t look away. He recognizes his father’s seidr as it brushes against his own, the flavor of it, the strength which had always been so comforting and now terrifies him in some way he can’t explain. “What do you know of the Chitauri?”

Loki is shaking so badly now that his words tremble, his tears such that he can barely speak. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Do not lie, child,” Pabbi says, thunder in his words, and the walls shake and the Chitauri must have been what killed Thor but Loki can’t remember, he doesn’t understand.

His father’s eye fills with the inky black-gray of his seidr, so unlike Loki’s own bright and fizzy green. Pabbi’s magic is one of battle, of war, the same that he had used to crush his enemies under the might of the Aesir until he rebuilt the foundation holding up the Nine Realms. It transforms his face until the very light of Yggdrasil glows from within him, until Pabbi drops away and sitting before him is the God of Battle his father is, and so terrible to behold Loki can’t look away. The Allfather is the endless abyss that circles their world, the being who drove his spear through Laufey’s kingdom, who called upon the fire in the sky and rained it down on his enemies, who conquered the very stars. His gaze pierces Loki’s soul with frightening ease, seeing him for everything he is and everything he isn’t, his faults laid out in stark relief.

And then, just as suddenly, he is Loki’s father once more and Loki comes back to himself to hear his own screaming.

Pabbi is speaking but Loki can barely hear the words over the pound of his heart, his own terrified cries. His father pulls the blanket Mamma had made him warm around his shoulders, brushes his fingertips over his cheeks where the tears fall, where Loki shudders. “My son,” he says, his mouth pulled taut, his face so pale Loki can’t look at him. “Do you love me, and your mother, and your brother, as we love you?”

“I am unworthy of it,” Loki sobs, burying his face in his blanket.

The warrior says, from beside them, “You will always be worthy, Odinson.”

For all that his brother has died, for all that the warrior saved them, Loki doesn’t want the dread to become realized, doesn’t want to accept what he already knows as truth. That’s how he knows he must speak it, must give it life. Skildir always told him that to hide behind weakness was a sin, and Loki knows, more than anyone, just how full of sin he is.

“What did I do?”

“Do?”

“ My brother,” Loki says, angry that his agony should be prolonged, and so wretched in his grief. “Thor is—” He almost can’t say it, can’t believe it, this new reality where he is alone, where he has failed. “Did Thor die because we went to the market alone? I told him and told him, but he wouldn’t listen and I tried my best, but it wasn’t good enough, it’s never good enough, and now my brother is gone and it’s my fault, it’s – it’s my fault.”

The warrior stares at him, wide-eyed. When he looks at Pabbi, they say a thousand words with a glance. The warrior approaches and kneels at Loki’s bedside, pausing only when Loki cringes from him, though only for a moment. He sets Mjolnir at his knee and brushes his hair from his face, tying it back, and now Loki can see his strong cheekbones, his dark blue eyes, the gentle smile under the thick beard. The warrior takes Loki’s hand carefully because his own are enormous, scarred and calloused and strong. “Your grief is misplaced,” he says, with great tenderness. “Do you not yet recognize me?”

“No, my lord,” Loki says, bowing his head low. The tears that had never stopped grow ugly and fierce again. “When Allfather gave me my title he said I had to guard Thor with my life, and – and I have failed, and I accept the punishment you must give me.”

“Loki,” the warrior breathes, so rough Loki can hardly understand him. He gently tips Loki’s chin up. “Your brother is not dead. He is kneeling before you.”

It is a falsehood, a lie, a trick. Loki is good at them, has always been good at them, and this must be one too – he is himself, Loki son of Odin, Sovereign Prince of Asgard and Protector of the Realm. A good student, a boy who loved playing ball, and making mischief, and telling jokes at his brother’s expense just to make Lady Sif laugh. It must be a falsehood. Loki is good at falsehoods, but he cannot see deceit in the warrior’s face. Rather, he sees the echoes of – his eyes, that laughing blue, and the upturn of his nose. Arrogance, too, though it’s softened by the helm he wears, heavy on his shoulders and with it the responsibility of their realm. He sees good humor tempered by duty, and battle-weariness like Loki has only ever seen echoed in the identical blue of his father’s remaining eye.

None but the future king of Asgard could ever wield Mjolnir.

He does not understand what has happened, only that the man kneeling at his side is his stupid, short, funny and best brother.

Loki has only seen nine passes of the stars. His hands are small, his body is as it was when he went to sleep yesterday, here in the nursery with Thor in the bed across from his, who was always hiding his books of adventure and romance from Lady Hilda, as she was apt to scold him for reading such nonsense. He is overcome with dizziness, but when he blinks the warrior is still before him smiling that familiar smile. “I don’t understand,” he whispers, shaking his head as if the action could rattle an explanation free.

His father takes Loki’s other hand, turns it palm-up. As Loki watches, Pabbi touches a fingertip to the center where the life lines are closest and a glowing rune appears, a deep orange like the light of the setting sun, brilliant and beautiful. It tingles under his skin, though the feeling is secondary to the heat of it at his joints and the base of his neck. “This is the mark of Sigrun.” He closes Loki’s hand, and each fingertip glows softly before the color fades away. “You have been very ill, Loki. This was the last course of action available to us, and the only way we could save your life.”

It seems impossible. It is impossible. “I don’t understand.”

There is a deep arrow of sadness, an anger in the warrior’s gaze that Loki doesn’t understand. There is so much that he doesn’t understand. “What is your last true memory?”

“Pabbi was holding a summit with the elves,” Loki says, staring at this man who would be his brother. “Thor and I slipped away from the palace proper to go to the market. We – we needed flax thread, the special one that Kieran’s pabbi sells at the tailor’s shop. Thor kept insisting on red, even though Mamma’s shawl is going to be blue. I’m making the dye with gooseberries and it has to be blue.”

The man’s face smooths now into a true smile. How could Loki had ever thought him to be anyone but his brother? The smile is unchanged on his face, wide as the swath of stars over Asgard. “We kept the dye cauldron in Sleipnir’s stable, because you knew it would be the last place anyone would look for it.”

When Loki and Thor had hauled the cauldron into the stables at the dead of night, the horse had looked deeply into his eyes, as if he understood all Loki told him and did not approve of their mischief. It had been but a shiver of magic in the center of his chest, had excited him into laughter.  “He’s nice to us if we give him sweets from the kitchens,” he says faintly. “I feared he would kick our heads. He didn’t like us there.”

“Indeed he did not,” Thor says, smiling, though with a terrible sadness in his countenance that Loki doesn’t understand.

How long has passed? How many years has it been? Loki stares at Thor and feels an ugly panic dig deep into his chest. He wishes desperately for Mamma, her soft arms around him, her fingers gentle in his hair. He doesn’t know why she’s not here – only the fear of before, the certainty that he had done something terrible, haunts him, bites at his throat and stings in his eyes. She had been crying so much, in the Great Hall.

Skildir always told him that to hide behind weakness was a sin, but Loki cannot make his tongue move, cannot ask the question that needs asking.

He has always been the coward Skildir accused him of being.

“Am… am I better now?” he asks of his father.

Loki is startled to see his father’s face wet, that he has caused this to happen. He clambers up from his blankets and wraps his arms about his father’s neck, buries his face there near his bristly cheek as he has done every day of his life. Pabbi goes still for long moments, so long that Loki shrinks away from him. Only then does he wrap his arms around Loki and hug him just as tightly, his strong embrace around Loki’s thin shoulders. “Yes,” Pabbi says into his hair, cradling Loki’s head in his big hand. “Yes, my dear son. You are better now.”

.

The first inclination Loki has that this isn’t a terrible dream is when Lady Hilda doesn’t come to wake him up, singing as she throws open windows, with his clothes cleaned and pressed and ready for the day.

She had a voice like a nightingale. She would sing as she laid out clothes, and as she got the bath started, and when she poked at the bear-shaped lump that was his brother, who would growl and grumble from under his blankets. She sang as she brushed their hair, and as she laced their tunics, and as she delivered them to their mother’s breakfast table, stopping only to drop a kiss onto each of their heads.

Loki thought he’d cried all his tears last night, held in his father’s arms, but he finds he has a few more this morning waiting for his great aunt, who may very well have passed to Valhalla as advanced in life as she’d been. He isn’t certain if he wants to know she’s gone where he can’t yet follow, but his heart cries out for her regardless, in ways he cannot control or escape.

He is just throwing back his blankets when a gentle knock comes at the door, and the warrior – Thor – pops his head in. “Are you awake, brother?”

He’s in pale linens with light boots at his feet, his blond hair combed and neatly secured at the nape of his neck. There is no trace of the battle-hardened warrior, or the weariness in his eyes. So transformed it’s easier to see his brother in this enormous man, in his smile and good-natured exuberance. He fills the nursery near to bursting just with his presence and Loki soaks in the sight of him, amazed that this should be Thor. His brother was foolish and funny and brave, and he liked to monkey up trees and jump into ponds, run races with his stupid friends and have grand adventures as far away from their mother’s watchful eye as he could get without scolding.

He isn’t the boy now, shorter than Loki and bad-tempered with it, for all that Loki was second son and ought to be the smaller of them. Thor is enormous, so broad and tall that even Loki, gifted with height, just barely skims his waist. It makes him seem very far away, as far as the years that separated them. He is a stranger now, made more so when he sees Loki weeping and says, “No, oh no,” and kneels before him, gathering Loki’s thin shoulders and gently hugging him.

“Thor wasn’t in his bed,” Loki says, hiding his shame as best he can there on his brother’s wide shoulder. His hands are shaking as he scrubs them over his face, and his lip won’t stop trembling. “My brother, he wasn’t here, I woke up and thought I’d slept late, but then Lady Hilda never came and I remembered.”

Grief tears at Thor’s expression, takes away everything that Loki recognized as his brother and leaves him a stranger. “You aren’t alone, brother. I know this is frightening, but soon you’ll come to know your family again, your friends, and all will be well. It’s only these first painful days that you must first get through. Know I will not leave your side until you are once more on steady footing.”

Loki is not much appeased, but there’s nothing that can be done. When Thor brushes the tears from his cheeks, smiles his big bright smile, and says, “You’ll feel better after a hearty meal. Come, let us break our fast together,” Loki knows he has no choice but to get out of bed and face the world head-on.

Loki takes the clothing Thor has brought behind his changing screen, because though it seems unlikely that Thor doesn’t know about his Otherness, he finds he feels too brittle to find out for certain. The clothes Thor has brought him are not his own, in varying and ugly shades of brown and blue, but they are warm on his skin and he finds them comfortable enough. Thor even brushes Loki’s hair, making even more of a mess of it, but a splash of water slicks it a bit and though Loki knows when it dries it will be a curly disaster, for now he’s presentable.

He takes Thor’s hand when they leave the nursery, as he has always done, and Thor looks down at him in surprise before squeezing his fingers. If Loki closes his eyes, the familiar smell of his brother, the cadence of his walk and the sound of his breathing, can almost fool him into believing all is well.

He feels fragile in a way he is not accustomed to, so it is perhaps with little surprise that when they enter the dining hall together, morning sunlight just beginning to break over the horizon, he freezes at the sight of the warriors seated at the long table.

There is a man, long in his red beard who can only be a son of Lord Arnbjorg, and only one such son had ever been compatriots with Thor. He has a massive bowl of bread pudding in front of him and is speaking with a blond man sat at the head of the table. The blond man’s hair lies combed back from his brow, and a frankly ridiculous mustache is twirled at each corner of his mouth. Beside them sits a son of Vanaheim, his dark features smooth as glass.

Of course. Of course they would still be Thor’s brothers-in-arms.

They weren’t boys anymore but grown men, and when they catch sight of Thor and stand, the knot of terror that had been steadily growing beneath Loki’s ribs sprouts teeth.

What defense could Loki possibly have now, against his tormentors?

“It’s true, then,” Volstagg says quietly, his blue eyes hooded as he stares at Loki with something in his expression Loki doesn’t recognize and can’t place.

If Thor towers over him Volstagg is a giant, thick as a tree and just as tall. His long, heavy beard does little to hide the barrel of his powerful chest, the giant branches of his arms. Now… now, Volstagg is so large, so strong, so powerful that he could throw Loki across the room, could hang him from the rafters, tear him limb from limb. He carries an axe at his hip that’s as long as Loki is tall.

Volstagg had always been a brute but Fandral had been mean, like a viper that waited to strike until you showed your belly. Loki had always felt wrong-footed with him, never knew whether to call him friend or foe. Fandral would just as likely smile at him as sneer, and some days the two expressions felt one and the same. His power was in his tongue, which lashed and drew blood, sometimes days after words had been said. Loki was quick with his words, too, but he’d never quite learned how to make them hurt as much as Fandral’s could. And still Loki would take him over Hogun, who didn’t care enough to speak to him or be his friend. His casual dismissiveness hurt worse than anything, because Loki understood that he mattered so little that he wasn’t even worth a passing kindness.

That Thor was friends with these idiots had never made any sense – that he took their council now as an adult meant that Loki was… had they been friends? Had Loki found his way round the Warrior’s Three? Had the angry pain of childhood given way to friendship and comradery as adults?

Somehow, he doesn’t think so.

They are adults, grown into their limbs and their power, and so formidable that the panic Loki barely has under control takes over. This is real. This is happening. This isn’t a terrible nightmare he’s waking up from, a fever dream where he’s caught like a beetle in a spider’s web. His father is old. His brother is a grown man. And the Warrior’s Three now have power over him they’ve never had before.

They’re staring at him, and Loki realizes he’s rooted to the floor. He can’t quite seem to catch his breath.

Thor is still holding his hand, looking back at him with confusion written across his broad face. Loki wants to believe – wants to believe it’s alright now, that Thor came to understand how tumultuous his relationship with the Warrior’s Three had always been.

It was only a few months ago that Loki had humiliated Volstagg in front of Lady Sif, had made him fall ass over tit in front of her like a toe-tied idiot. That she had laughed so hard and for so long had added insult to injury. Volstagg was the third youngest son of an ancient House, fat as a hog and pimple-faced at eleven passes of the stars. He had been big, so much bigger than Loki, but not big enough for his bit of revenge. No, that had taken all of them.

He had to hand it to them, they planned it well. They waited until Baldr and Braggi had left with Uncle for their annual pilgrimage to the Temple of Light, when they knew Loki would be vulnerable without the strength of his best friends. They had grabbed him from his bed in the middle of the night, gagged him with a kerchief and tied his hands and feet together, Volstagg’s awful, stinking breath in his face. Loki had screamed and shouted every obscenity he knew, to no avail. Thor had been shouting too, he remembers, and demanding they stop, but it had mattered not. Volstagg declared broken honor and would be avenged.

Loki had fought like a viper. His only consolation was that it took all of them to tie a rope around his ankles and throw him over the edge of the Rainbow Bridge.

They had stood above and laughed as he’d screamed in terror, as Lady Hilda’s voice whispered in his ear, Take care when you play near the Bridge, dear nephew. If you fall over the edge you will fall forever, straight to the heart of Yggdrasil’s glory. They had laughed when Loki vomited, and when he soiled himself. When his eyes rolled back into his head.

It was Heimdall who had pulled him up, who had wrapped him, ice-cold and shaking, in his great cloak. Loki has no memory of Heimdall’s rescue or the hours that followed, catatonic with terror that he had almost fallen into the void, that they had almost sent him into an existence of eternal damnation in the fathomless black spaces between the worlds for having dared humiliate the great Volstagg in front of a lady.

When court was held, the three of them brought before Allfather for judgement, Loki thought that finally, finally Pabbi would recognize their constant torment for what it was, that he would understand why Loki never wanted to play with them, or why he only ever got in trouble when they were involved. Perhaps he would have, if Thor hadn’t tearfully intervened and made witness for the character of his comrades.

Thor was First Born, Crown Prince, Future of the Realm. His words held weight, whether he believed that or not. That he would defend his friends after what they’d done, in front of Pabbi’s Court, had been like a dagger straight through Loki’s heart, so sharp that it would be days before the blood bloomed across his chest. Pabbi had listened and Loki was good at reading faces, he always had been, and he’d seen pride in Pabbi’s expression – pride that Thor had been loyal to his friends and defended them so ardently, that Thor was standing up for someone other than himself for once.

Pabbi had declared it high time that Thor and his friends begin their warrior’s training, to make them understand the importance of honor and duty. That the Warrior’s Three had been made to apologize to Loki for their actions meant nothing, not when their deed had won them the greatest prize of all – their warrior’s training beginning a year early.

And then, twisting the dagger in Loki’s heart, Pabbi had turned and scolded Loki for humiliating Volstagg in a manner not fit for a prince. Loki had been made to apologize to them for his mischief in front of the Allfather’s court. In front of Mamma.

That was the first time Loki had understood the truth of his life. He had always known that as second son he was an insurance against the worst, that he existed to protect his brother and make sure Thor came of age to one day sit on the throne of Asgard. But he’d never known until that day, his father standing above him angry and disappointed, that he mattered less than Pabbi’s heir and first-born son, that his very thoughts and feelings were inconsequential, that the wrongs committed against him were forgiven if Thor wished them so. Loki had teased Volstagg in front of Sif and in return Volstagg and his comrades had threatened Loki’s life for the offense. And then to be made to apologize, to look his tormenter in the eye and ask for forgiveness had been more than Loki could bear.

He’d tried to explain it to his brother in the days after, when he found himself unmoored, close to an edge he never knew he had been teetering on, one he hadn’t been able to name until he’d looked at Volstagg’s self-satisfied face. Thor had come to Mamma’s rooms where Loki had found himself unable to leave, brought him sweets and his big, dimwitted smile, begged him to come play. When Loki tried to explain his despair and humiliation, Thor had said, uncomprehending, “It’s your place to be at my side, brother, to support me when I one day rule Asgard, just as it is now the duty of my friends to protect me when I am king. I won’t have you angry with one another.”

That was when Loki knew the truth of it. His brother considered him a possession, as surely as his toys and books, to do with as he pleased, as if all their lives were whim to Thor’s wants and needs. As if Loki’s life was already accounted for, and he had no choice in the matter.

He hadn’t spoken to the Warrior’s Three since. They were boys yesterday, rough-housing, shouting, playing together, while Loki looked on. Idiots, the three of them. Now he can see them behind Thor’s shoulder, their bodies rigid and faces stiff. They weren’t children anymore but men who towered over Loki, made him feel like the boy he was, frail in the face of their might.

What defense could he have against them, with his magic so new in his breast? How could he possibly keep himself safe?

Loki won’t cry in front of them, he won’t, but he can hear the breath whistling out from between his teeth.

He wants to go home, he just wants to go home. Lady Hilda hadn’t combed his hair, and Mamma hadn’t taken his hand and walked with him to his first lesson, and Thor hadn’t teased him and gone sour when Loki teased back, and he and Thor were supposed to go to the lake and gather carp scales for Loki’s dye. There wouldn’t be time to make more if this batch didn’t work.

Loki realizes, with painful suddenness, that the dye is gone, because their gift was finished long in the past. Mamma’s shawl had aged in the time that had passed between that moment and this one, because Loki was a man grown and then became very sick, too sick to heal, so sick that Pabbi and Mamma could only save his life in this way, to take him to a time before the sickness took hold. Something had happened, something he had done – a curse, perhaps, something that had aged and withered him too, and he must find out, he has to know, but who here can he possible trust? He is surrounded by the people he knows and a family he loves, and has never felt so alone.

He can see his brother’s lips forming his name, but Loki has lost the battle with his fear. Thor kneels before him and gathers him close, and Loki clutches at him as he always has, even when he hated himself for it. It matters not the scratchy beard, the wide chest – the smell of his brother is the same, the warmth of his embrace a balm against the ice surrounding his heart. Thor is murmuring nonsense into his ear, holding Loki tightly and combing his fingers through Loki’s hair, drying into a mop and hopelessly curly without Lady Hilda’s touch, his mother’s care. “It’s alright, brother,” he’s whispering over and over, so gentle, like Loki is made of delicate glass. “No one will hurt you here.”

Thor knows nothing because it isn’t alright, nothing about this is alright. He could not tell his brother that he has already been hurt, a thousand times over. That Thor is part of the fabric of that hurt. Thor doesn’t see the danger of his comrades, never understood that they saw Loki as the annoying little brother who followed them everywhere, but Loki only ever followed them because it was his duty to protect his brother.

“We didn’t think it true,” one of the men says behind them. Fandral. His voice is so much deeper now than the high notes of his youth. He holds himself with the strong security of a man who has the upper hand, of a man who knows how to use the sword at his belt. “Your father—"

“His life could only be saved this way,” Thor says, and pulls away enough to brush Loki’s shame from his cheeks with his thumbs. There is something ugly in his expression that Loki can’t read. He thinks his brother is angry with him, embarrassed of him, but Thor’s touch is tender, a smile in his sad eyes. “It’s alright, brother,” he says softly, arranging Loki’s collar until it sits smooth. “Let’s break our fast, hmm?”

Loki hadn’t eaten with them since before the Rainbow Bridge. He doesn’t know how to tell Thor that he doesn’t want to see them, talk to them, sit with them as if all is well. Doesn’t know how to explain how much they scare him because their dislike is born of real resentment, for being the tag-along, for being smarter than all of them put together, for using his cleverness instead of his might, his tongue instead of his sword.

Thor takes his hand once more and guides him to the table, which is so tall it comes to his chin when he sits at the long bench. There are heaps of food, pitchers of juices and mead, but most of all there are the eyes of them, staring at him. He sits as close to Thor as he can, and knots his shaking hands together under the table.

“He is no older than my Gudrun,” Volstagg says, sitting heavily. He stares at Loki and Loki tries not to look back. Even seated he towers over him, his long red beard braided like his father’s.

Thor piles Loki’s plate with his favorite foods, bread and biscuits, elderberries and sweet pink apples that grew in the orchard he and Thor played in when the first spring apple blossoms began to bloom. He looks at the food so he doesn’t have to look at them, and somewhere along the way realizes he’s starving. The snakes roil in his belly, but he can’t help shoving a biscuit into his mouth, the buttery texture exploding over his tongue as he chews. Volstagg’s eyes are wet, and Hogun’s face is contorted with something Loki can’t name.

“He truly doesn’t remember his life?” Fandral asks, and he sounds so angry that Loki shrinks under it, tangling his fingers in the tail of Thor’s tunic.

“He is but nine,” Thor confirms, and smiles down at Loki. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “And a good and kind little boy.”

Loki jumps when Fandral leaps to his feet with a snarl and stalks away. Loki doesn’t understand, but Thor gently rubs his shoulders with one big hand. “We grieve for you, Loki – the loss of the man we knew, the place you filled in our lives. Our friend has been taken from us, and that is more painful than we expected it to be. Do you understand?”

The biscuit sits like a stone in his belly, and Loki’s chin trembles. “They were my friends?”

“Yes,” Hogun says, calm and quiet. “We were friends, even when your path diverged from ours.”

Thor tenses at his side and Loki says, helpless, “Pabbi said I was very sick.”

They stare at him, and then one another, and Fandral is growling something under his breath on the other side of the room. “Yes, my friend. You were sick,” Volstagg says, and reaches across the great table to offer Loki his big hand. Loki is terrified of it and what it can do to him, but more terrified of even a perceived slight. Volstagg is too big, too powerful now. He won’t be tricked by the likes of Loki, not anymore. Loki is helpless in the face of that might, helpless enough that he subjugates himself and gives him his own hand, so small in comparison, and trembling as Loki is trembling.

Volstagg doesn’t squeeze, or pull, or yank – instead, his touch is as gentle as Thor’s had been, as if he too is afraid of hurting him, as if he must be mindful of his strength. “We had many grand adventures together, fought side by side,” he begins quietly. “You brought great honor to the House of Odin, great honor to your family. The rivalries of our youth gave way to companionship and comradery, and we became inseparable, we five and the Lady Sif. We have cared for you as if you too were our younger brother. Do you believe this?”

He won’t, he won’t, not in front of them, not where they might see his shame. He chews on his lower lip to control the trembling in his chin, swallows at the knot in his throat again and again, before he can look up and meet Volstagg’s gaze. “You were always mean to me.”

“Aye, we were,” Volstagg says, and folds his fingers over Loki’s small hand. “It is my greatest shame, that I was so awful to such a dear friend when we were children. Now you are a child once more, Loki, and do not remember the apologies I gave you over the centuries, or the friendship we had. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? Forgive us all?”

Loki’s chest hitches, and he rubs his cheek dry on his shoulder. He nods, jerking and uncertain, and the smile that blooms over Volstagg’s face in reply is like the sun. He beams, and Loki can’t look at it, or them, anymore, so he stares back down at his plate and eats his apple, ashamed and angry and sadder than he can remember ever feeling.

He hates lying, even when it serves a purpose.

.

Loki doesn’t see Mamma that day.

No one expected to have a princeling in the castle again, he thinks, because no one quite knows what to do with him. There are no lessons, as Loki learns that Skildir finally went to Valhalla in time past, though in his most private thoughts he thinks it unlikely Skildir ended up in Valhalla, and if he did there is something dreadfully wrong with the whole institution. There are no visits to Loki’s most beloved and treasured place, the library, because it is no longer in the palace proper – it has been moved to the center of Asgard, near the Scholar House, where all could enjoy it, not just the royal family. For want of anything else, Loki trails Thor as he sits at his desk and writes, as he speaks at a council meeting on grain of all things, as he talks to the guardsmen about the outer stable wall beginning to decay.

Eyes follow Loki everywhere. He can’t stand being observed on the best of days, but now their eyes burn into him like fire, judging him. They stare at him in the halls, on the training grounds, at the stables when Thor takes Loki to see Sleipnir. None approach or speak to him, and Loki’s heart has begun to cry out for Baldr and Braggi, his cousins and dearest friends in the entire world, who he could share everything with. He doesn’t know why they don’t come to see him, and only the thought that he has done something awful that keeps them away quells his tongue from asking.

Always, always the panic is alive under Loki’s ribcage, beating a tune against his bones.

That night, after Thor helps him change and crawl into his bed in the nursery, brushes his fringe from his forehead and wishes him a good night, Loki almost can’t wait for him to leave before the tears come on him.

He had always known he would grow to be someone who was friendless and without companionship – he was Other long before his body began to mature. But it had always been alright, because he had his family. He’d seen Pabbi in passing while he was receiving complaints in the Great Hall, and of course Thor had been at his side all day, but today had been the first day in his life that he didn’t see Mamma. She hadn’t come to fetch him for his evening bath, or tell him stories or sing to him, as she has done every night for as long as he can remember.

He knows, as surely as he recognizes the nose on his face, that his mother is angry with him. His heart cries out for her, but when just yesterday her magic would sing to him no matter where he was, now he finds the connection blocked, cold, like a steel door has come down between them.

His mother is angry, and the panic he had been keeping at bay earlier now knots in his throat. He doesn’t know how to control his magic without her, doesn’t know how to channel it without her guiding touch. All day he has felt it gather in his elbows and knees, the base of his neck and low deep in his back, a building pressure that Loki knows well enough will soon become unbearable.

If Mamma is angry with him, she won’t come take his seidr pain. He must find a way to make amends.

He thought maybe he could make her a picture – she liked it when he painted for her – but a picture is too small to right this wrong that he’s done. He thinks, then, of the first stage play he wrote for her, about a little rabbit named Princess Josie. The costumes had been a bit lacking, but Loki had only been six, and he has more experience now. He could write a story for her about – about the earliest Aesir explorer, Jormungandr, who came to the shores of Asgard when their Realm was still a sphere, who traveled the oceans of Asgard battling the monsters that would become their mountains, their sky, their trees.

The story is already humming in his head, but he has nothing to write it down in. The nursery is barren and empty, even with the fire burning brightly in the hearth in the center of the room. His hiding space under the floorboards is empty, his wardrobe barren. There is nothing here that is his, aside from the blanket Mamma made him – his books and his games and his lyre are all gone, let alone his writing desk.

He had been a man grown. Like Thor, he must have been given rooms away from the nursery when he got older. Loki scrapes his wrist over his eyes and climbs out of the bed, intent to find them.

When he opens the nursery door, a man sitting in a chair across from the doorway, with a broad sword laid over his knees, looks up.

Loki stares at him. The man stares back.

“Is all well, my lord?”

He’s so big that when he stands he towers over Loki, though it’s clear he’s trying not to. The voice would give him away, if the bristles on his chin didn’t – he is a relative of Volstagg’s, blue eyed and red cheeked.

“Yes,” Loki says, swallowing the fear, the confusion lodged at the base of his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for,” the young man says quickly. “Your brother asked me to watch over you tonight, as he had business to attend to on Midgard.”

Loki’s breathing speeds up, though he would never give any relative of Volstagg’s the joy of seeing him shake.

Thor promised he would be here, he would stay close, but he had lied.

He has left for Midgard, and Loki is alone.

He swallows, pugging his chin up the way he had seen Thor do when he was trying to act princely and hide his fear. It didn’t suit him then, just as it doesn’t suit Loki now, but he has no other recourse. “What is your name?”

“Rolfe, my lord, first son of Volstagg and Hildegund, brother of Arngrim and Leif and Gudrun.”

Volstagg’s first son, a man before him. Loki’s head swims. He thought he’d had a grasp on how much time has passed, but the evidence before him tells him how very wrong he was. “I want my things, Sir Rolfe.”

“Your things?”

“Yes. You will take me to my rooms.”

“My lord, I don’t – ”

“You will do as I command,” Loki says, as imperiously as he knows how.

Rolfe stares at him. “Yes – I mean, yes my lord, of course, but I don’t know where they are.”

Loki glares. “Can’t you ask someone?”

“ No one knows where they are. You enchanted them long before I was born.”

A thrill goes through him. His magic, strong enough to hide space, to mask his movements? Could he really be so controlled, so powerful, to keep an enchantment of such strength going indefinitely?

On the heels of that thought is a much more pressing concern. Why would he feel the need to cloak his space from the world? Why would he, a man grown, a prince of Asgard, feel that he must hide?

Loki has always been clever, too clever by half. At times like these he wishes he wasn’t, that he was more like his brother, who took everything at face value and trusted the word of others implicitly, even when he had no reason to.

“Why do you guard my sleep, Sir Rolfe?”

“You’ve been sick,” he replies, almost too quickly. “Your brother asked me to watch over you. He and my father will return on the morrow. Do you wish me to wake the Allfather?”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was Pabbi knowing about this. “I’ll ask him in the morning.”

“Yes, my lord. Rest easy. I will guard your sleep,” Rolfe says, and smiles.

It’s clear that Rolfe is not nearly as harmless as he is trying to appear. Strangely, it eases his mind – for all that Thor isn’t here, Rolfe is, and if he’s even half the brute his father is, he does indeed make a decent guard. Loki just wishes he knew what he was guarding.

Loki turns back to the door, but stops and looks back. “Thank you,” he says, and Rolfe looks so shocked that Loki can say nothing more as he closes and locks the door behind him.

.

In the morning, Thor comes to fetch him. He doesn’t insult Loki’s intelligence by trying to hide his weariness, at the very least – instead, he sits at the edge of Loki’s bed, sighs as he stretches his legs out in front of him. “I’m very sorry, brother. I had unfinished business to attend to on Midgard, business which we will conclude this morning.”

He is wearing his light tunic and boots again, but Mjolnir is at his hip today, heavy on his belt. It amazes Loki that his brother should wield it. They had snuck into Pabbi’s vault many times to gaze at it, had made its replica from twigs and branches and had grand battles in the orchard. Thor’s eyes had gleamed with pride whenever in Mjolnir’s presence, as if he’d known that one day the mighty hammer would choose him.

His brother is sitting on his bed, and yet Loki’s aches for him, for the boy who was Loki’s entire world. He misses his impish smile with too-big teeth, his wild blond hair. That his brother is still here with him doesn’t matter in the slightest – Thor is an adult and busy with adult things. Thor leaves with great purpose to other realms. Thor is Crown Prince of Asgard, and spent four hours yesterday talking about grain.

Loki misses his brother so much. He’d know what to do in this new and terrible existence Loki has found himself in.

He wants to say a million things – wants to tell Thor that he promised not to leave, that he swore an oath, but Thor is his lifeline for all that he is a stranger. To cause a rift in this relationship would be the worst thing he could possibly do when Loki is utterly alone, a boy in a world where there is no space for children.

He swallows it all and instead asks, from behind the screen where he is dressing for the day, “What is on Midgard? Have the mortals angered Pabbi?”

Thor laughs. “They do not worship him anymore, to his relief. They’ve entered the next part of their history – they have cities, government, technology.”

Midgard was a planet of farmers and hunters, axes and clay bowls, and now – cities? Technology? How many centuries has it been? He swallows against the surge of pain, rubs at the center of it in his chest. His hands tingle, and he squeezes each into a fist until the numbness in his fingertips goes away.

Loki comes out from behind the screen and his brother gives him that disarming smile of his as he helps button the sleeves of his tunic. “Rolfe tells me you were asking for your rooms.” Loki averts his eyes, but Thor thumbs gently at his chin until their gazes meet. “It is not an unreasonable request – of course you want your things. You outgrew the nursery long ago.”

“Sir Rolfe said I hid them,” Loki says helplessly. “Why would I do that?”

“You’ve always been the most private person I know, brother.”

Loki is beginning to understand that Thor has learned to hide many things behind that smile, that he has learned to use that guileless and naïve grin to his advantage. “You don’t know where they are?”

“Indeed I do not. Let us speak with Father, he may be able to track them down. In the meantime, a friend of mine from Midgard is here. He’d like to meet you.”

“From Midgard?” Loki asks, as Thor takes his hand and leads him out of the nursery. “I’ve never met anyone from Midgard. Is he nice? What language does he speak? Is he small? I expect Midgardians to be very small creatures.”

“So many questions!” Thor says with a laugh. “He is the leader of a band of warriors who call themselves Shield. Like Father, he can be a bit – coarse. Be on your best behavior.” When Loki smiles, he adds, “Or as the Midgardians say, ‘fake it until you make it’.”

Pabbi is seated at the high throne when they enter the hall, Gungnir in hand, as royal and unyielding as the King of Asgard need be. There are new people at Court in dark blue clothes, holding long metal devices that can only be weapons, and a man dressed in black waits on the dais before the throne. Like Pabbi the man wears a cover over one of his eyes, though scars peek out from underneath it, speaking to the wound that had caused the mutilation. His clothing is made of black animal hide, and his expression is grim. To say he strikes a menacing figure is an understatement. Loki freezes, but Thor gently tugs him along. He trots to keep up with his brother’s longer strides.

The man is openly staring at them as Thor and Loki bow to their father in respect. “You did say the situation had been taken care of, but this wasn’t what I was expecting,” he says, narrowing his remaining eye on Thor. “Care to explain?”

“Loki was ill, too ill for even Eir’s healing touch, and beyond aide of even the most skilled healers of the Nine Realms,” Thor replies. His brother learned discretion at some point, because his expression is a mask, blank and cool. Thor had said that this man was his friend, but Loki thinks those were just sweet words for a boy, as if Loki was too stupid to understand. “We know not what the Titan did to him, only that we could not remove his hold, which had spidered into his very being and embedded itself too deeply for any to reach. It spilled over to those under his thrall, including the Hawkeyed one. Despite your Professor Xavier’s efforts, they used their hold to torture him until he stood at the brink of death. This was the only way we could save his life.”

Titan? Torture? Loki remembers the chains, the metal in his mouth. He goes cold all over, sweat freezing at his neck and under his arms. He is suddenly very dizzy, and he grips Thor’s hand tightly so he won’t sink to the floor.

There is a vast and ancient intelligence in the man’s gaze, and Loki realizes that he is old, far older than he looks. His gaze seems to penetrate Loki down to the marrow, and he forces himself not to squirm under the scrutiny. The words Thor speaks are running in circles around his mind, but he can’t think on them, not yet, not here, with the man in front of them peering into Loki’s soul. “Is that right.”

“Do you ask if I am being truthful?”

Mjolnir vibrates where it’s lashed at Thor’s hip. It has always seemed to have a life of its own, even long before Thor came to wield it, but to see it, feel it through the grip of Thor’s hand, makes the seidr in Loki burn in his joints and low in his back.

The man is not cowed, though Loki doesn’t think it’s due to ignorance of the power Thor wields with his hammer. “How old is he?”

Thor has learned to hide much behind his smile, his bland exterior, but he has not yet learned how to keep his emotions in check while annoyed. “In Midgardian years, perhaps two hundred or so. On Asgard, Loki is a boy of nine.”

“Is that right,” the man says again. “And you’re sure he doesn’t remember his life before?”

“There is no life from before.”

For all that he is a small man, Allfather’s very presence seems to fill up all of the available space in the massive hall. His seidr is beautiful – it can inspire fear, but it can also calm and soothe. It is a balm to Loki’s weary heart, and he feels wrapped in it, cradled in his father’s embrace for all that Pabbi is standing at his throne with one hand behind his back, Gungnir at his side and his gray beard long. “The child standing before you will not be able to tell you what he has not yet lived.”

Loki can tell that the man doesn’t like that answer, but doesn’t understand why. “And what about my men?”

“My queen has been well at work, and is even now in the Healing Halls. She expects a full recovery for both,” Pabbi replies. “With their health returned to them, our continued assistance in the rebuilding of your city, and Loki healed, our reparations to Midgard will be fulfilled.”

“Will they,” the man says.

Thunder booms somewhere in the distance, and Loki jumps.

The man steps off the dais and down the steps from Pabbi’s throne. The Einherjar grow tense, which in turn make the men in blue tense, their grips tight on their metal cylinder weapons. The man comes to a stop before Thor and they stare at one another for long moments, before he crouches down before Loki. His scrutiny is impenetrable and deep, and Loki wonders if Fury lost an eye to rebalance the universe, because he’s pretty sure the man could have probably killed him if there’d been two eyes doing that at him.

He sucks in a sharp breath.

Fury. His name is Fury, appropriate for someone who looks as dangerous as he does. But how can he know that? Loki has never seen this man before. Is it his seidr, reaching out its tendrils in question, or something from before, when Loki was a man grown?

“Hello,” he whispers.

“Hello,” Fury says. His gaze is fathomless, dark, filled with violence and honor and rage. A soldier through and through. “Do you know who I am?”

“My brother says you are his friend,” he says, and fights the urge to hide behind Thor’s leg. He flexes his fingers in his brother’s hold, reassuring himself of the firm grip. He doesn’t know why he’s lying, but something about this man unsettles him. “He said you are from Midgard, and that Midgard isn’t just farmers anymore. Are there truly cities now? I would like to see them one day.”

“I’ll bet.” Fury tips his head. “What can you tell me about the tesseract?”

The tesseract? “Grandfather was tasked with its safety by the Vanir, and brought it to be safeguarded in Asgard’s Vault because their people were engaged in civil war and they could no longer protect it,” Loki says. “It’s blue and glows. It’s very pretty.”

“Indeed it is,” Pabbi says, and descends the steps to where they stand. He sets his hand on Loki’s shoulder, and Fury’s frown smooths out to a peculiar emptiness as he slowly straightens. “It is the jewel of Asgard, and its protection one I take most seriously.”

One corner of Fury’s mouth goes up. “Alright, your highness,” he says. “I’ve got to be honest, this wasn’t the kind of solution I was expecting, but I can’t say it isn’t effective. I have your word that the situation is taken care of, and will remain taken care of.”

“The King of Asgard makes no promises, and swears no oaths,” Allfather says. “We will discuss it no further.”

Fury looks back down at Loki, studies him as if Loki is a particularly interesting puzzle he’s trying to work out. “You’re luckier than you know, kid. See you around.”

They leave as quickly as they came, Fury and the blue soldiers with their odd weapons. Thor accompanies them back to the Bifrost, though Loki doesn’t know if it is to be sure of their safe return to Midgard, or to be certain that they left Asgard.

He looks up at his father, only to find Pabbi already gazing down at him. There is love in his eye, as there always is, and Loki wraps an arm around his waist and buries his face in Pabbi’s side. It makes him laugh, the low burr in his chest that Loki loves listening to, his big hand resting on Loki’s back. “You did well, my son.”

“Midgardians are scary.”

“They have grown much in the past millennia. One day soon they will take their place at our table, as one of the Nine.” Pabbi leans down, conspiratorial, his words just for him. “Would you like to hear a secret?”

Loki grins. “Yes.”

“I like them.”

His father? The man who had spoken of Midgardians as primitive children, barely capable of speech? “You do?”

“They have grown to be strong beings who stand firm in their resolve. That is an honorable trait, don’t you agree?”

Loki chews on the side of his lip. “I suppose so, but they could be nicer about it.”

Pabbi only smiles. “Would you like to visit your mother? She’s asking after you.”

Everything in Loki’s being seizes up, hope igniting in him. If he could see her he could apologize, could make amends. “Mamma is asking about me?”

“Your mother has been hard at work healing two Midgardians very dear to your brother, who were wounded most grievously during a mighty battle on Midgard.”

Thor had spoken a name – Titan. The being who had hurt Loki, had made him sick. Had Loki been fighting him too, on Midgard? Had he been taken? Was that why he could not be healed?

His father can see who he is down at the heart of him, can read his feelings and intentions. Pabbi’s gaze makes Loki feel brittle, small, easily broken, because in it are words he doesn’t want to hear, emotions he doesn’t want to feel.

Pabbi saves him from the asking of it by taking his hand. “Come, my boy,” he says, and guides him out of the Hall.

.

The Healing Halls of Asgard were renowned throughout the nine realms, and the Ladies of the Hall even more so.

The story went that Eir had been a Valkyrie in the before-time, the most ruthless and violent of the maiden warriors. It was during the Battle of Bråvalla that her ruthlessness turned savage, and in her berserker rage she tore through the very fabric of the world. Yggdrasil caught her, molded her and shaped her, and spit her out into the being Loki has always known – Healer Eir, the Lady in White, who was quite mad and spoke only in riddles, but who could cure even the most grievous of injuries.

Eir fascinates Loki. He is young in his seidr but even he can feel the power of her enchantments, her spells and sorcery. He can feel her before they even enter the Healing Halls, a balm on his own weary heart. He feels lighter than he has since he awoke in this terrifying new world, though he knows not if it’s Eir’s enchantments or his mother, standing outside the door leading into the innermost sanctum, holding out her arms. All at once the barrier between them floods free and he can feel Allmother once more at the center of his being, where she has and would always be.

He races to her and collapses into her embrace. Mamma holds him, his body and his mind and his soul, his answered love for her so great that he can barely contain it. Her calm sings inside of him, tender as the arms wrapped around him. “My dear Loki,” she whispers to his ear, holding him to her chest as if he had never parted from her, as if the last two days of distance had never been. “I’m so sorry I have not been to see you. My time has been consumed with the heavy task laid before me. Nothing could have kept me from you for anything but life and death.”

“I missed you so, Mamma,” he whispers, and she strokes her fingers gently through his hair, her cheek pressed to his forehead, her lips at his temple. “I thought you were angry with me, that you – that you did not want to see me. I was going to write a play for you, to ask your forgiveness.”

“While I have always enjoyed your plays, my love, I am not angry.” She tugs him up enough to meet her gaze, affectionate as it has always been. She, even moreso than Pabbi, has changed – her eyes are lined, her golden hair streaked through with a regal and beautiful gray that makes the health of her cheeks, the glow of her eyes, that much more stunning. It is in those small lines and wrinkles that he truly sees the stretch of time around him. It is awful, that he should have missed so much time with his mother, who he loves more than anything and anyone. She feels his pain and replies with an answered love, as delicate as a bird and strong as an ox, firm and unyielding and resplendent and everything. He dashes his wrist over his cheeks and smiles when she helps him, drying his face gently with the wrap around her shoulders. “You are my beloved, tender-hearted, mischievous and joyful child. I could never be parted from you, Loki.”

Loki knows it to be true, even though he can sense her grief through the seidr, the same grief in Pabbi’s eye, in Thor’s trembling smile. He can feel her joy, too, that he is with her again, and he hugs her tightly, kisses her cheek one, two, three times, until the sadness in her eyes fades into laughter. Pabbi is smiling, too, and takes Mamma’s hand gently in his own, kissing the back of it as is their way. They speak a thousand words with a glance, but when Mamma’s eyes find Loki’s again they are shining, mysterious and deep as they always are, and so full of love that his chest aches with it. “Would you enter with me?”

“Yes,” he says, without hesitation. “I met a large and solemn Midgardian, and am curious to meet more.”

“They are very ill, my child,” she says, cupping his cheek. “It may be overwhelming. Are you certain?”

He is, and she knows he is. She smiles at him and Loki feels brave, and fearless.

He is glad for her hand when she opens the heavy door. All at once he understands the separation between them these last painful days has not been Mamma’s doing, because when the door opens, the magic almost overwhelms him. His mother’s hold is all that keeps him from flinching away and turning to run. He’s never felt so many enchantments at once, spellwork and sorcery and runes working in tandem. Mamma’s touch grounds him, for all that her seidr feels hesitant and careful brushing against his, and she easily keeps the green sparks from catching at his fingertips and traveling up his arms. He gulps and she smiles down at him, encouraging and gentle, and guides him forward with her.

There are two figures eclipsed with golden light, not unlike when Pabbi enters the Odin Sleep. But Pabbi’s chamber is always calm, the enchantments warm to the touch, quiet and humming. The enchantments over the two figures are anything but. Seidr races over each of them, knitting and working together in a complicated patchwork of light Loki could never hope to understand. The Midgardians are in the white tunics of the sick - a younger man, his hair a shock of blond, his eyes bruised and sunken deep for all that he is heavily asleep, and an older man with thinning hair and strong features. Loki has a terrible, disorienting moment where he thinks he knows him – knows, suddenly, that he is strong and brave and competent in a way only battle-hardened warriors could ever be, and that he loves him beyond reckoning, beyond words, a deep and unshakable caring that seems anchored into the pit of his very being.

He comes back to himself with a sharp inhale, Mamma’s hand on his shoulder warm and firm.

How could he know this? How could he feel this love, this tug in his heart? Is it true, what he has long suspected – that he was on Midgard, that something happened to him there when he was a man grown, that he knows these people? Only a catastrophe of world-shaking proportions could have made Pabbi consent to bringing the mortals here. Loki has never known any mortal to be allowed into the Healing Hall, let alone the Soul Forge, and he wonders at Pabbi’s curious words, the respect in them when he spoke of the Midgardians and their development.

“Are they princes?” Loki whispers, close to his mother’s skirts.

She reaches down to gently stroke his hair. “No. They were grievously wounded because of Asgard’s actions, because we did not follow the right path and make the right choice, and in doing so doomed them to their deaths long before they were due. And so, we are righting a wrong.” She gazes into his eyes, into his very heart. “Do you think this was the right course of action?”

“Yes, of course! Their lives are not ours to meddle in. That is what Pabbi always says.”

Mamma looks at the Allfather over Loki’s head. “Yes, that is what Pabbi says. To right this wrong we brought them here, to the Healing Halls, and have been working ever since to be sure of their survival. Would you like to speak to them?”

Loki swallows, chancing his own look up at Pabbi. He finds his father curiously silent, his gaze impenetrable. Loki will not find the answer there. “Yes, Mamma.”

Mamma smiles, and Loki knows he made the right choice.

The younger man is deeply asleep, his expression a grimace of pain, but the older man’s eyes open when Mamma approaches. The feeling of familiarity that overcomes Loki is so awful that his fingers tangle in Mamma’s dress despite himself, even as she sits at the man’s side and the golden halo of enchantments laid over him shifts with her, never touching her skin. Her gaze is warm as she takes the man’s hand, his knuckles big and scarred in her delicate embrace. “Dear Phillip, breathe easy. You have asked, and now I provide you an answer.” Mamma closes her eyes for a moment, and Loki thinks that maybe Fate has caught her in its tangled web, because her eyes are very far away when they open. “This is my little boy, Loki.”

The man, Phillip, swallows. His eyes dart to Loki, and Loki is horrified that there is fear in them. Perhaps he does not know where he is, or what has happened. Loki tucks himself into his mother’s side as close as he can get, shy and uncertain, but the pain of the man’s gaze hurts more than Loki thought it would. “It’s alright,” he whispers. “Mamma is the greatest healer in all of Asgard. Well, Eir is perhaps the greatest healer,” he amends, and Mamma sends him a rueful smile, “but Mamma is loving and caring and wonderful. She will make you feel better.”

Phillip licks his lips, cracked and dry. “She has,” he says. His voice is like dust, so thin and ragged that Loki can hardly hear him. The enchantments healing him reflect over his features, runes like fireworks on his pale skin. “Your mother has been very kind.”

“She is the Allmother,” Loki says helplessly – in the single word is everything that Mamma is and was and would always be. “You have nothing to fear now. You and your companion are in good hands.”

Phillip’s eyes move past Loki’s to the other platform, where the younger man sleeps. “He’s okay?”

“He sleeps deeply,” Mamma murmurs, as she reaches into the enchantments and gently wipes the sweat from Phillip’s brow with a sickcloth. “He will remember the torment of the last weeks, but the pain of it will be dulled, as if thinking back on a bad dream.”

“That’s good,” Phillip says, his eyes going hazy with exhaustion. “I can’t stand it. Knowing how much he suffered.”

Mamma’s eyes fill with unshed tears. “Sleep now, dear man. I will not leave your side.”

Loki leans his head at his mother’s shoulder, there where her golden hair smells strongest of honeysuckle. Phillip’s eyes slowly close, his breathing going even and quiet, and within seconds the patchwork of seidr begins to hum anew. “The other man, he is Phillip’s beloved?”

“He is.”

Loki chews on his lower lip. “Why is his healing different?”

“It was his mind that was wounded, dear one,” Mamma says, gently. “He was touched by the very same sickness that nearly took you from us.”

Pabbi stiffens, imperceptible, where he stands sentinel at the door, but Loki sees. Loki always sees.

“Will you have to make him a child like me?”

“No. His was but a touch, and muted through you,” Mamma replies, smiling her sad smile. “In time it will be safe to let them return home. Until then, I must remain here at their side.”

Before, he would have considered the wisdom of sharing this with his parents – he had to be strong and fearless, Protector of the Realm – but this was a whole new world and there is no one to protect, not anymore. Thor is a man grown and it is Loki who needs protection, until he comes into his seidr. Until it stops attacking him for keeping it bottled, for not knowing how to wield it.

He hates showing his weakness, but he finds in this he has no choice. Days might have been feasible, but weeks were not.

“You are the best healer, Mamma,” Loki says softly, flicking his eyes up to hers. “You always make me feel better.”

“Do you feel pain?” Mamma asks, and Pabbi steps away sharply from the door and comes around the beds where the Midgardians sleep.

“My seidr pain,” Loki says, ashamed and cringing under his father’s urgency. Pabbi takes his hand, spreads his fingers wide. The rune glows at his touch, brighter than Loki has seen before, and he realizes that the rune in the center of his palm is the first of many – that they rise up his arms and disappear under his tunic, but he can feel them still, tingling in his shoulders and down to the pain gathered low in his back. He flinches away from his father but Pabbi grips his hand tightly, his eye aglow with his own spell work.

“Oh,” Mamma says, low and mournful. “Oh, my child.”

Mamma reaches to where Pabbi holds his hand so tightly and gentles his hold. She folds Loki’s fingers in hers, green sparks answered by the darker shade of Mamma’s magic, and the pain begins to ease, a wave of relief so strong he can scarcely believe it. Loki didn’t realize how badly he had hurt until it recedes, and he sighs, leaning into his mother’s side heavily. “I tried to make it feel better, but I couldn’t by myself.”

“I didn’t remember. These days were so very long ago,” she tells Pabbi quietly, her voice thick with sorrow. She brushes her lips gently over Loki’s brow. “He has been master of his magic for so long that I’d forgotten the time before, when he couldn’t control his power.”

A master of magic? It is as Loki suspected, and he thinks he will feel a thrill of joy once the relief begins to fade, but right now he can only close his eyes and sigh there against Mamma’s shoulder, as she runs her fingers through his hair. “I tried to be brave,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“It is I who am sorry,” Mamma replies, and cups his cheek until he raises his head to meet her gaze. “Your seidr caused you pain. I remember some mornings you could scarcely leave your bed.”

“You always make me feel better, Mamma. You are the best healer in all the realms.”

“If only that were true,” Mamma murmurs, and kisses his forehead. “I will come to you tomorrow, so we might share our morning meal. Until then, I must continue my work here. Should the pain grow to be too much, ask your father to bring you back to me.”

“Yes, Mamma,” Loki whispers, and wraps his arms around her neck, hugging her as tightly as he can. She laughs softly, though he thinks perhaps she is crying too, but when he finally lets go her cheeks are warm, her smile bright, and she kisses his forehead, cradling his face in her hands.

.

After that, Loki’s days pass as if in a dream. He still trails Thor throughout his day, but he is so happy he feels like he’s floating on air. His Mamma loves him, his seidr pain is gone for now, and he met a Midgardian. No – he met three Midgardians. They are as wonderful and brave as he had read in his books, and he can’t wait to tell Baldr and Braggi all about them. He decides he would very much like to visit Midgard one day, see their big cities and their ‘cars’, which Thor tells him are large, mechanical devices that took Midgardians and their children from place to place instantly. Such a feat seems unimaginable, and Thor regales him of all the Midgardian magic, which was not born of seidr but of something called ‘science’. Loki wishes to learn about this science, and he tells Thor so, but Thor just laughs and hoists him up to sit on his shoulders. It is not very princely at all but it’s fun, and Loki thinks that this must be what his father feels when he sits on Sleipnir, so tall he can see out across all the Nine Realms.

Loki’s good mood takes him through their evening meal together in the dining hall, and not even the Warriors Three can ruin it. Their dinner is kjötsúpa with crusty bread, one of Loki’s favorites. It’s delicious, and in Asgardian tradition they each tell a story as they eat. Where before all their stories were about witches and princesses and magic, now there are centuries of battles and wars to draw from.

Volstagg tells the tale of their first hunt as men, when Thor decided to take down one of the famed dragons of Muspelheim. He failed fourteen times (“Fourteen times! After the fifth we thought him mad. By the eighth we were all burnt and crispy. By the eleventh I almost threw him off a mountain.”) before bringing one down. “It was old and sickly and could only cough smoke,” Volstagg adds, to Loki’s helpless giggles.

Hogan tells one of the old stories of the Vanir-Asgard war, of a prince in love and a Vanir shieldmaiden who resisted every single one of his advances, thinking him a war-mongering brute. Realizing he had met the love of his life, the prince gained new respect for the plight for her people and her family. Understanding that he was in a position to stop the war, the prince offered himself for peace, if only she would agree to his hand in marriage and unite their two peoples forever. “Their wedding portrait still hangs in the Great Hall,” Hogun adds, and Loki realizes that the story was about his parents.

Finally, it is Fandral’s turn. Truthfully, Thor had always insisted that they save Fandral for last because Fandral was the best of them at storytelling, so it’s no great surprise that the tradition continued into their adult lives.

“It was a dark night in the deepest of winter, when we arrived on Alfheim,” Fandral intones. “We had been called to aid the Allfather in what we thought was a rebellion, though we had only just been given our vambraces the season before.”

“ You had only just been given your vambraces, thank you,” Volstagg says, rolling his eyes. “It was like dragging around pups not yet grown into their paws.”

“These were the days before your brother came to wield his mighty hammer,” Fandral tells Loki. “He was like a young wolf, pawing at the earth, nervous with excitement for his first bout. All of us were, without realizing that the glory we thirsted for would not be found that day.”

Thor’s smile, which had been bright on his face, begins to dim. “That was indeed a day of much bloodshed. Perhaps a different tale, Fandral.”

“Little did we know that we would fight our first battle on the cold snowy banks of the River Retlhyn.” Loki is sure he takes a big bite of his chicken, a swallow of mead, purely for the dramatic pause. “We were young, untested – alright, all of us except Volstagg,” he says, rolling his eyes when Volstagg glares at him. “Our vision of what battle would be was steeped in the stories we’d heard around campfires, the old guard speaking of wars and battles fought. We thought we had an idea of what we were stepping into.

“Heimdall left us as far away from the heart of the battle as he could, but not far enough. When at last the golden light of the Bifrost faded from our vision, we stood in the middle of pure chaos and pandemonium.” Fandral’s eyes get far away, staring just beyond Volstagg’s shoulder. “The snow was painted red with blood. We could hear nothing but the clang of swords, the roar of the wind, the bellowing of men dying. The frost giants, using Alfheim’s civil war as a cover, had invaded, and it was there on that snowy riverbank that we met our first frost giant, one so large it seemed to blot out the cold and tepid sun.”

Thor abruptly stands, so fast that his chair falls backwards with a crash. The Warriors Three jump to their feet as well, hands at their hilts, looking about for an unseen foe. It is not until Thor says, “This is not a suitable tale,” that Loki realizes there is no foe – that Thor has leapt to his feet, furious, at the story.

The Warriors Three stare at him as if he’s lost his mind. There is so much seidr in the room Loki feels as if he’s drowning in it, and his own magic snaps and crackles between his fingers, a paltry response to Thor’s anger. Thunder rumbles outside, and Loki blinks as he stares out the window. The sky had been clear just moments ago, the mother star setting low.

“Thor, it’s just a story,” Volstagg says, holding his hand out across the table, the other over Fandral’s chest. “These were the events as they happened.”

“We have been granted the most precious and elusive of all gifts – a second chance. You will not fill him with fear and self-loathing, again.” Thunder booms outside and Loki realizes – Loki realizes it’s his brother, that Thor has seidr, and he stares up at him, stunned by this sudden turn of events, by Thor’s anger and Volstagg’s pain and Fandral’s embarrassment and Hogun’s judgement. “Have you not learned your lesson? Have not I? ”

“My prince,” Fandral says softly, his face bright red, and leaves without another word.

Volstagg stares after him before heaving a long, low sigh, setting his napkin down. “Apologies, Thor.”

“I value our friendship, so I ask that you leave me,” Thor replies through gritted teeth, and Volstagg and Hogun both bow and make their retreat.

It is only after the heavy door has closed that Thor collapses to his seat, head in his hands. Outside, the storm clouds dissipate as if they never were, and now – now Loki understands why Thor talks to the grain master so much, why he is the Master of Stores.

“You can make it rain,” he breathes.

“Of all that just occurred, only you would remark on that,” Thor answers, but lifts his head to look at him. “Indeed I can brother, but it is fickle and responds only half the time.”

“Except when you’re angry.”

“Except when I’m angry,” Thor replies, and sighs. “Ask, then.”

“That I should be defending him is revolting, but Thor – Fandral was only telling us a story about the monster he slew, not challenging anyone’s honor.”

“No,” Thor says, quietly. Loki knows his brother’s temper is like smoke – quick to darken, quick to dissipate – but the man sitting beside him has never resembled Loki’s brother less. The weight of the crown he wears rounds his broad shoulders. Exhaustion paints the furrow at his brow, the grief at his mouth, and Loki – Loki wishes he were still Thor’s Protector, that he could still make him laugh with a word or a joke, that he could keep Thor safe. His brother has seen battle, has taken lives, has been to war and fought evils Loki could scarcely dream of. His brother has seen darkness and it has touched him, changed him, as much as Thor tries to hide it with his natural cheerfulness and joy.

His brother is a stranger, and Loki has never felt so helpless, so alone, or so afraid.

“It has taken longer than I care to admit, to accept my place in Asgard,” Thor begins, quietly. “I wanted the throne, once. I had grand dreams of what it would be like – you at my side as my chief advisor, the Warrior’s Three at our backs as our war council, Sif wearing the crown of a queen. I thought that to be king was nothing but war games and feasts, quests for my lady love and grand adventures.” He snorts, shakes his head. “I was a fool. Over the past few years I’ve finally come to understand my place in the cosmos, Loki, to accept the position I will hold in these Nine Realms, to recognize the magnitude of my responsibility. It is for that reason that I decided it was time to open diplomatic talks with Jotunheim.”

Jotunheim? The realm of the frost giants, monsters of the most grievous and terrifying fury? “Why ?”

Thor smiles his sad smile. “For more reasons that I can articulate. Father and I argued for many months – argue still. Not because we disagreed that the time had come to offer mercy to the Jotnar, but because we disagreed on what that mercy should entail.”

Loki can scarcely believe what he’s hearing. His brother, the boy he played with in the orchard, the boy who dreamed of using Mjolnir to one day destroy all the monsters of Jotunheim, sitting before him speaking of mercy. “What did you do? Did…did you give them aid?”

“I gave them back the heart of their world.”

Loki sucks in a sharp breath. The Casket of Ancient Winters was a jewel, and it had a place of special honor in Pabbi’s Vault. It was the key to Jotunheim’s existence, yes, but with it… “They will surely attack us now!”

“It will take many years before the Casket can be used for anything but healing the planet of a thousand years of suffering,” Thor replies softly. “In that time I will show them friendship, and try to undo what I fear cannot be undone. Our people call them monsters, but to say that they are mindless beings fit only to be slain is a falsehood. Once, they had a culture as complex as ours, and their royalty married into the Houses of all the Realms.”

It is so hard to think of the frost giants, mindless and red-eyed and violent, as anything other than the savage beasts they had shown themselves to be. “How do you know this?”

“I have studied their history,” Thor says. “I had reason to.”

“Is that why you got angry at Fandral?”

Pain slashes across Thor’s face like a knife wound. “I love my friends dearly, but that a dishonorable thing we did in our ignorant youth should be a mealtime story was not something I could abide.”

“What did you do, Thor?”

Thor shakes his head, pressing his lips tightly together. “We – we killed a Jotun named Naglfari, mated consort to Alfheim’s crown prince, Audr.”

Loki stares at his brother. “That’s not true.”

Thor squeezes his hand gently, his gaze distant as if looking back at the young man he was and finding him wanting. His mouth twists with loathing and grief. “We were children who snuck into a battle we had no business fighting. We attacked because we saw frost giants, which to our feeble and idiotic minds equated ‘foe’. You were the smartest of us and recognized who he was, though he had no mark of his station or crown at his temple. You tried to stop us, as you always did, but I was a fool. Naglfari defended himself, frightened for the safety of his babe, and we took it as signal to attack.”

“He had a child?”

“Naglfari was with child, Loki. The Jotnar are not as we are, in the ways of men and women – they can sire children as well as carry them. We did not know at the time, though I have often wondered if that would have stayed my hand.”

Thor bows his head, staring down at Loki’s hand cradled in his. Loki can barely keep up with his words, caught in a revolving loop around what Thor is saying – that the Jotnar are Other, just like Loki is. Mamma had always said that his personhood was normal, that it was just another form of being, that there were so many people in the Realms like him, but he never – to hear the evidence of it, to know it as truth, makes him feel lightheaded.

Thor must know. He must know Loki is...  that he... but if he does he doesn’t say it, and Loki doesn’t know whether to be grateful or not. He bows his head too, over their hands.

“We took his life,” Thor says, his words shredded and awful, “and the life of a helpless babe, because we were ignorant fools trying to prove ourselves worthy. Because we saw them only as monsters. The Jotnar were on Alfheim because Naglfari called for their aid to quash the rebellion, to help his spouse’s cause and save his family – the most honorable of reasons to take up a blade. And instead of saving them, I single-handedly took Prince Audr’s family from him. And afterwards, I felt not a hint of remorse for what I had done. I called them monsters, but it was I, Loki, who was the monster.”

Thor wouldn’t do that. Thor wouldn’t kill a being trying to shield itself and its young. Not his brother, the boy who had once nursed a trio of kittens back to health after finding their mother dead, who wept when the tiny runt of the litter died where it lay in his lap, no longer suckling at its bottle of milk. Loki stares down at the table, unseeing.

Thor gently tips his chin up until their gazes meet. His eyes are red-rimmed and awful, so full of sorrow that it breaks Loki’s heart anew. “Do you think Naglfari deserved such a fate? Simply for the color of his skin, the shape of his body, the color of his eyes?”

“ No.”

“Do you think, then, that Jotunheim deserved such a fate as it got? Because it isn’t just one babe that has died in their mother’s womb on Jotunheim, Loki. There is no food, no clean water, no sunlight. A world with millions of people, dying a slow death.”

Loki’s heart is breaking thinking of something so awful, so many people starving, so many children who had died because of something that Pabbi had done. Pabbi would never – but of course he did, he had, Loki had seen the Casket with his own two eyes. “But the Casket is back now,” he says, his voice thick. “You returned it. You made it right.”

“Yes,” Thor replies gently, “but that does not hope to make up for the generations of Jotnar who never gave their intellect, their thoughts and ideas and dreams, in service of their realm and all the Nine.”

Thor’s shoulders are drawn low by the weight of this horror, and Loki understands now why his brother seems so old sometimes, old before his time. “I don’t tell you these things to make you angry at Father. He is king and did what he thought was right. The Jotnar made war by invading Midgard, and we protected the mortal realm as we have always done, and punished the Jotnar for their actions. Only we never stopped punishing them, or showed them mercy. The Jotnar were our enemy for so long that we forgot they could be anything else.” Thor squeezes his hand. “It is only in Father’s actions that we can grow as leaders ourselves and learn from the mistakes he made.”

“That’s what Mamma says,” Loki say, chin trembling. “That sometimes we make mistakes, and have to learn from them so we won’t make them again.”

“Just so.”

“Do you think the Jotnar will forgive us?”

“I think – I think there are things that cannot be forgiven,” Thor replies, and silently begins to weep. It is not something he ever thought he’d see Thor do, so strong and proud, but the red of his eyes spills over down into his beard, and in that moment he is Loki’s brother once more, holding that tiny dead kitten and sobbing, begging Loki to make better what cannot be unmade. It is the worst thing in a conversation filled with worst things, and Loki wants to wrap his arms around Thor’s neck and never let go. “I hope – I hope that in my actions I have at least righted a wrong, and that the children of Jotunheim will have a chance at a life that their mothers did not.”

“You did,” Loki says, as certain and sure as he has ever been. “I’m so proud of you. You did a wonderful thing, Thor. I think that the other me, the older me, was proud too.”

Thor ducks his head, as if Loki won’t see the heart he has always worn on his sleeve. It’s an easy thing to give in to his impulse, to fold himself around Thor’s broad shoulders and hug him tightly, to settle his cheek there against the bristles of Thor’s beard and breathe in the scent of him, familiar and warm. His hand is heavy on Loki’s back where he holds him near, and when Loki straightens and smiles, Thor meets his gaze heavy with sorrow. “Pabbi has been saying for a while now that it is time I take on more princely duties.”

Thor smiles through his grief, running his hand gently through Loki’s curly mop. “Has he, little one?”

Loki nods. “Though I am wary of what you say, that the Jotnar will not attack us, for good or for ill you have opened peace talks by returning the Casket to their people. Your deed was altruistic and kind-hearted, but what good is altruism if they still yet starve?”

“What do you propose?”

“I’ve been following you for days now as you met with the crop masters. There is enough siloed grain to feed a population three times the size of Asgard, with this year’s harvest set to double that amount with your hard work and your rain – don’t think you’re going to get out of telling me about that, by the way,” Loki says with a shake of his head.

“You propose to give them grain?”

“I don’t even know if they eat bread, because it stands to reason that the Jotnar eat different things due to their climate. Still, it’s worth considering. Pabbi couldn’t say no, not in the face of a lasting peace with one of the Nine he’s sworn to protect.”

That makes his brother laugh, so big his entire face lights up, while somehow making his grief that much worse. He gathers Loki to him, hugging him so tightly Loki’s ribs creak, and when Loki screeches and smacks him on the shoulder he laughs even harder and hoists him up like a sack of flour. “Just when I thought I’d lost you forever,” Thor says, smiling from ear to ear. “I don’t think they eat bread, but you know, I never thought to ask. It’s likely that even if they don’t, we have other resources to share with them. We should write down our thoughts and ask the scholars tomorrow, what do you think?”

“Yes,” Loki says, and imperiously points to the door from his extremely undignified perch at Thor’s hip. “Lead on, faithful steed, and get me a pen.”

He and Thor spend the rest of the evening in Thor’s study, coming up with viable plans to provide humanitarian aid to the Jotnar without taxing Asgard’s supply and Pabbi’s goodwill.

He realizes that the good feeling inside of him is purpose, and for the first time since he opened his eyes here in this brave new world, no longer feels so unmoored.

.

That it is one of Thor’s journals he has stolen is important to him.

The cover is worked leather, with the crest of the House of Odin embossed on the rich brown. The pages within are so fresh that they crinkle when he opens them, and the smell – Loki loves new journals. They had just been sitting there on the corner of his desk, a whole pile of them, brand new and unused. They were the same journals Pabbi had used all his life, housed in long rows behind the big desk in his study. That Pabbi expected Thor to continue this tradition, and that Thor was digging in his heels, was all par for the course, and so Loki hadn’t felt even a twinge in relieving him of one.

When he’d woken in his brave new world the first thing he’d looked for were his treasures in the hidden place, the small nook he had carved out under a floorboard in his corner of the nursery. In the Before Time it had been his trove for all that he stole, from jewelry to books to a visiting Duke’s stupid helm, encrusted with fake rubies and smelling of cheap hair pomade. Now it is empty, save for one of the threads from Mamma’s shawl, a paperweight from Pabbi’s office that he’d liked, and now, his new journal.

Loki has always been able to see very well in the dark, a gift which has done him great service over the years. He crawls under the frame of his bed with his pillow and his blanket, and angles his new journal until the light of the moons shining in from the window illuminate the pages. He licks the tip of his pen, and opens his journal to the first page.

As I cannot refrence journals that I no longer have, I must start fresh, which is a wund far more painfule than I expected. Still, the worries of my life in the Before Time are very diferent than the burdons I must carry now, and so it is not such a bad thing to begin anew. My entire life has begun anew.

He stops, staring down at his curly script, and has a moment of indecision. To write his innermost thoughts and feelings down feels like – like spitting in the face of his parents’ grief, but how can he not ? How can he keep this bottled up inside himself? Already he feels a relief inside, knowing that though he cannot speak a word of this to anyone, he can at least put it to paper and get it out of his head.

I am Loki, Prince of Asgard. I have seen nine passes of the stars. I am out of my time, and an imposter.

.

It takes a week before Thor’s temper has cooled enough that his idiot friends chance coming to the dining hall for breakfast. The last days had been absurdly peaceful, just the two of them, but Loki knew their newfound solitude could not last.

The three of them stand when they arrive, but just as Loki knew he would, Thor waves whatever they were going to say away, forgiveness in his smile.

Loki doesn’t know why it took him so long to understand this, but last night while writing in his new journal Loki came to the realization that the nursery is now a part of Thor’s Hall, in expectance of children he will have with his future queen. The Warriors Three live here with their own families as part of his household, because Thor is crown prince and goes on state trips and gives back frost giants their treasured possessions.

Loki had been lamenting his own weakened position for days now, when he should have been marveling at the strength of his brother’s. He hadn’t backed down from his companions last night because Thor was becoming Allfather in his own right. The thought is both amazing and terrifying, and Loki feels that strange tugging pull of his seidr, but he ignores it as best as he can and decides that he would use this new and wonderful position to order his brother’s idiot friends to do his bidding.

“We are planning an aid mission to Jotunheim,” he declares, and enjoys Volstagg’s shock, Fandral’s confusion, Hogun’s passive non-expression that nevertheless shows his surprise. There is a lady with them today in resplendent dark blue leathers, her unusual dark hair in tendrils, staring in a very unladylike manner. Thor grins down at him and Loki smiles back, before slapping the parchment down on the table and climbing up onto the bench. A servant helpfully left a cushion, and Loki clambers onto it so at least he is of a height with Thor’s shoulder, not so small that the table comes up to his chin. He reaches for the raspberry juice, which he has to grab with both hands, and Volstagg swallows the disgusting mouthful of gruel he’d been showing the world. “What?”

“An aid mission,” Thor replies calmly, as he pours juice into his own cup, reaches for the sweetbreads. “I told Loki of my work in Jotunheim last night, and we decided that we had more to offer than just the Casket.”

Fandral rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I’m very sorry for my hand in this, but I must say that of all the ideas you’ve had in recent years, many of which were truly breathtaking in their absurdity, this is perhaps your most questionable.”

“Thor,” the lady says, and she darts her gaze from Loki to Thor and back again. “We haven’t had a chance to speak yet, Loki. It is I, Sif.”

She is as stunningly beautiful as Loki always knew she would be, much more beautiful than all of them combined. That her hair is dark now instead of the blond ringlets of her youth does nothing to detract from her beauty. Despite the loveliness of her face her expression is stiff, for all that she tries to smile. Her eyes track him with a mistrust she can’t hide, and Loki shrinks under her gaze, because in her eyes is a sincere and honest dislike that hasn’t changed since he saw her last, tiny and waif-like and intent on being a warrior. After Volstagg had – after the Rainbow Bridge, after he had finally been able to leave Mamma’s rooms and go back to the nursery, she had come to him and screamed at him for dishonoring her. She called him ergi, and whatever bond of friendship he had been trying to build with her had gone up in smoke.

She has clearly become the warrior she always wanted to be. And just as clearly, she had never grown to love him as friends love one another. Her dislike of him is so clear that he stares down into his juice so he doesn’t have to meet her gaze.

“You press your father’s hand,” she says.

“I do,” Thor replies, sure of himself, for all that he is tense at Loki’s side. “If what Father says is true – that this was the moment that things took a turn – I refuse to let the poison consume him again. I will not hide from him, not anymore, not when we know what came of it.”

“Thor,” Lady Sif says again, but behind them the great doors open, and Mamma comes in.

All of the warriors stand again, even the Lady Sif, but Loki can’t help himself – he clambers down from the bench and runs to his mother, and she crouches down to meet his embrace, folding him gently into her arms.

At her touch the pain that had begun to nag at his senses eases, and he buries his face there at her neck, hugging her tightly for long moments. When finally he pulls back Mamma is smiling at him, but Loki can tell that she is exhausted. Her face is lined with worry, and her gown is not crisp and neat as it usually is. It is clear she has spent many hours in the Healing Halls, and is taking a rest. As she approaches the long table all the warriors bow their heads in respectful greeting.

Thor offers a smile, a “Mother,” as he gently brushes a kiss at her cheek. “Pardon my rudeness, but you look tired.”

“Healing is hard work, though I thank all the Norns that it finally appears Clinton’s mending has turned the corner, after these long months.”

“He fares better?”

“His breathing is calmer. I’ve extracted as much of the poison as I could, and now it’s just a matter of knitting the wounds in his mind closed,” Mamma says, before she blinks at them all, as if only just realizing they’re eating together. “Forgive me, I do not wish to interrupt your morning meal.”

“No, my lady, we were just finishing,” Lady Sif says, and Volstagg makes some sound that Fandral quickly quiets with an elbow to the ribs. “We’ll leave you and your sons to your breakfast.”

The warriors make quick work in leaving, though Volstagg looks longingly at the bacon he left on his plate. Loki doesn’t know what it says about him to get a mean kind of satisfaction at heaping a pile of bacon onto his own plate, never breaking eye-contact with Volstagg until the door to the Hall shuts between them. Thor snorts at him and steals some for his own plate, under Mamma’s amused eye.

There is a friendly and loving quiet between them as they tuck into their food, so comfortable and right and Loki loves it, loves it when Mamma helps him spread jam on his scone, loves it when Thor gets butter in his beard and Mamma rolls her eyes and reaches over Loki to wipe it with her napkin. It is very different from Pabbi, who is always so serious – and just thinking of Pabbi, of all Loki had learned last night, makes a funny ache settle in his belly. He looks up at his mother only to find Mamma already gazing at him. “Thor told me about the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

“Did he, my love?”

“That was a very brave thing to do.”

“It was,” Mamma agrees, brushing the backs of her fingers lightly along his jaw, though her smile is for Thor alone. “Your brother is a very fine and brave man.”

“He is.” Loki glances up at his brother only to find Thor’s eyes averted, his cheeks pinked. He smiles, too. “He told me of the conditions that they have lived under, and I want to – Mamma, I want to do something for the Jotnar, to help them as Thor has helped them. Is that alright?”

Mamma looks at Thor over Loki’s head, but like Pabbi, their exchange says much without a single word uttered. “Yes, darling, that’s alright. I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

“Do you think Pabbi will be mad?”

“I don’t think your father will be angry. Rather the opposite.”

“He said I must act more like a prince, and less like a child.” His mother goes still, and Loki shakes his head. “In the Before Time, when Thor was a boy like me. That was when he made me Protector.”

Mamma closes her eyes for long moments, long enough that Loki knows the threads of fate have snagged in her mind’s eye. He thinks to touch her and bring her back to this moment, but then her eyes open and she is gazing at him with so much love he squirms under it. “You were – and remain – an exceptional Protector, Loki.”

Loki is so proud he can barely speak. “I think the older Loki did a good job, to have helped Thor become the man he is.”

“You did a very good job,” Mamma says, cradling Loki’s cheeks and kissing his forehead softly. “I love you.”

“I love you Mamma,” Loki whispers, and when he looks at Thor, just a little from the corner of his eye, he finds his brother with chin in hand, gazing at them with all the love in his heart out for the world to see.

.

This is the pattern that follows for weeks afterward. Loki and Thor take breakfast with the Warrior’s Three and Lady Sif. Afterward, Thor attends to his duties, or tutors the newest recruits to the Einherjar in the training yard, while Loki sits with Pabbi in his study and gets to read some of Pabbi’s most treasured books while Pabbi works. (To date, his favorite has been one of Midgardian magic from a nobleman named Galileo Galilei, who had rediscovered the Rules of Runes and called them Laws of Physics. Midgardians were indeed very clever creatures.) By early afternoon Thor comes to find him, they eat a light meal, and then they retire to Thor’s study to work on their plan to aid Jotunheim, the plan they hope to bring before their father in a month’s time, at the next Council. Afterwards they take a walk, or Thor will continue his lessons in teaching Loki to ride a horse, or they’ll go see Mamma in the Healing Halls, where the Midgardians are almost healed.

Thor calls the older man the Son of Coul, and speaks to him with such deference that Loki knows he must indeed be a powerful leader of the Midgardians to garner such respect from his brother. The Son of Coul is kind to Loki as well, though not with the same easy camaraderie he shares with Thor. Loki feels as if the man never takes his eyes off him, though Loki hasn’t been able to catch his gaze on him even once.

The Son of Coul is not the first to have looked at Loki and been suspicious of him. So many are, though Loki has never been able to understand why. He’d only ever asked his teacher once, and Skildir had turned to him and said, Of course people are suspicious of you. We can all see your wickedness as easily as the nose on your face.

Skildir, for all his faults, had been right. People saw Loki for what he was, even when he tried to be good. It is no great surprise that the Son of Coul, as respected and admired as he is, would see Loki’s wickedness too, especially after what Mamma said – that there was a great battle on Midgard, that whatever illness had consumed Loki had spilled over into those nearest him. Had spilled over into the Son of Coul’s beloved, the blond man who had slept many months without waking, his eyes dark bruises in his face.

Loki doesn’t get near the Son of Coul’s beloved, as a show of his own respect, but it doesn’t stop those eyes from following him.

It is a comfortable pattern, for all that it is nothing Loki is used to. He recognizes his brother most of the time in the man at his side, his humor and good cheer. Other times, when Loki watches him train, first with the Einherjar and then the Warrior’s Three, Loki doesn’t recognize his brother at all. They call him Thunderer, and the first time Loki sees that power on display his joints go liquid with a deep, inborn terror he doesn’t understand. His brother is powerful to a degree Loki could never have imagined the blond boy with too-big teeth and a quick smile to ever become, so powerful that not even the Warrior’s Three and Lady Sif can best him together, so powerful that when he really lets loose Loki understands why the training grounds have been so heavily warded.

Loki will never be so strong, or so powerful. He is thin in a way he knows he will never grow out of. He will never have the broad shoulders his brother has, the bulging arms and powerful legs, the brute strength to use Mjolnir as she was meant to be used. Not for the first time he wonders at the man he became, the man his brother had so clearly loved, the man he has seen on the ceiling of the Great Hall, a slender green figure next to the gold light of his family. What use had he been, if Thor had seidr too? Had his brother become this powerful out of need, because Loki could not protect him as he had been tasked to do by Allfather? Or had Mamma been right – had his Otherness been a sign of the great seidmadr he would become?

What, then, of the certainty when he woke in this terrifying new world, that he had done something awful?

He watches his brother laugh as he rains down lightning on the Warrior’s Three and shivers.

.

That night, he and Thor share their evening meal with Mamma and Pabbi. It is the first night they’ve been invited to Pabbi’s high table since Loki woke up on the floor in the Great Hall, for though they sometimes breakfasted with him, by the evening Pabbi was often so behind in all the work it took in the running of Asgard that he wouldn’t eat supper until very late. Tonight, Pabbi had set those duties aside to dine with his family, and Loki is at once very nervous and extraordinarily pleased. It is rare indeed to have both his mother and father together for a meal, and so when they enter Odin’s Hall, Loki’s heart leaps to see his parents at the window, holding hands high near their hearts and speaking quietly.

Mamma sees them first and smiles her soft smile, and though Pabbi is always very serious, Loki can tell he is just as pleased to see them when he gently guides Loki to the table.

As an additional treat, and perhaps in deference to the warm evening, they eat on Pabbi’s terrace, overlooking Asgard. The kitchens serve smørrebrød, with liver and veal, and crisp, cold lingonberry juice to drink. It is delicious and Loki realizes that he is happy, listening to his mother and father, watching Thor serve himself at least four times because for once his exertions match his appetite.

The happiness couldn’t last. As always, Loki is the one to ruin it.

“Pabbi, can I ask you something?”

His father nods, pouring more juice for him. “Yes, my boy. What is it?”

“Can you help me find my rooms?”

“Your rooms?”

Loki nods, suddenly nervous, and twists his fingers in the napkin on his lap. “Only, Volstagg’s son told me that the older me enchanted them so that they could not be found.” He pauses, just a moment, torn over the wisdom of what he needs to ask for, but though Thor had always been the braver of them Loki had always leapt after his brother regardless. “Mamma said I was a great seidrmadr, and one day would be again, but to do so I must have access to the rooms I lived in as a man.”

“No.”

Of all the things he was expecting it was not the hardness of his father’s expression, the shortness of his reply. Loki blinks once, twice, and even Thor’s brow furrows. “Why not?”

“As king I owe no explanation, not even to my prince,” Pabbi says shortly, and Loki flinches. Mamma reaches out to her husband but Pabbi stands, setting down his own napkin near his plate. He has not finished eating. “As a father, I ask you that you not broach this subject again.”

“But – I only want to see his things, Pabbi. His books and – and his tools of magic. I wish to piece together who he was.”

It is the wrong thing to say. His father’s face is like glass, impermeable, as it only gets when he is truly angry. Cold. Distant. “Your rooms are lost to the dark spaces between the worlds. I know you are curious, and wish for your things, but as time goes on you will have new things, and as many books as you may want. Do as I ask and do not broach this subject again.”

Loki watches his father walk away through tears, and he stares down at his plate, the taste of their meal like ash in his mouth.

Skildir told him, once, that he ruined everything he touched. At the time it had hurt more than anything to hear his teacher say such a thing, but Loki has long come to recognize the old man’s wisdom. Everything he had said had come to pass.

Loki knows well enough that he overstepped sometimes, but it wasn’t because he wanted to hurt anyone, even if that was often the outcome. He never knew when to speak, or when to keep his peace. In this case, it was clear he shouldn’t have asked. He’d ruined their evening, the first meal he’d eaten with both his parents since he woke here.

Thor lets out a long, unsteady breath and follows their father. Loki hears Mamma’s soft sigh in the quiet of the terrace, and is ashamed.

She comes around the table to sit next to him, but even Mamma’s presence, the warmth of her hand at the back of his head, cannot touch the cold ball in Loki’s chest. He’s always been smart, perceptive, and observant. Too much so.

“Pabbi is very angry at me.”

Even as she says, “My child, that is not so,” Loki knows his mother is lying. He himself is a liar, and he recognizes it easily in others. “Your father is angry with the situation, angry at the suffering we have all experienced, angry at what he had to do to save your life, but my darling, he could never be angry with you.”

“Then why hide my rooms from me, Mamma? Why not try to help me piece together who I was, if he is not angry?” The knot in his throat makes him feel choked, like he has frogs inside and can’t swallow around them. “When I woke up and I was here, and Thor was grown and Pabbi’s hair was white, there were chains all over my body. There was metal in my mouth, choking me. You have told me I was ill, but is that true?”

“Yes,” Mamma says so forcefully that Loki recognizes the truth of it, accepts it, even if he can’t make himself believe it. He hates knowing he is the cause for the tears that trace down her cheeks, even as she holds him so tightly, even as she brings his trembling body close to hers, cocooned in the circle of her arms. “Dear heart,” she whispers, lips at his brow. “I have loved you all our long lives. Please trust in me, Loki.”

Loki stares at Asgard laid out before them like a painting, the long line of trees kissing the ocean, the Rainbow Bridge glittering like a jewel as it met the Bifrost. The mother star is setting, turning the sky as gold as Asgard. “My illness was worse than the Son of Coul’s beloved?”

“Much, much worse,” Mamma murmurs, cupping his cheek and forcing him to look at her. “When Thor returned with you and we saw the extent of the damage to your mind, we knew that Eir would not be able to heal you. Your father, in his grief, refused to let you succumb to the madness he knew would take you from us.”

“But why won’t he show me my rooms, Mamma? Why is he so angry?”

“My child,” his mother says, with great gentleness and a grief Loki can’t stand to see on her lovely face. “In saving you, your father took your life from you. The man we knew as our son died the moment Odin pressed the runes into your skin.”

Chills race over his body. He feels as if he is wearing an imposter’s skin, as if his very bones are not his. “But I’m still here, Mamma. I’m alive.”

“Yes, you are here,” Mamma says, and her tears are awful, shaking things, for all that she tries to control her voice as she speaks. “But the man you became is gone, and with him centuries of a life lived and a family loved. You are alive, and here with us, but we grieve for the experiences you will never have, for the memories you will never share with us of the long lives we have had together. Do you understand?”

Loki stands so suddenly his chair scrapes backwards across the tile. “You and Pabbi and Thor, you look at me as if I am a ghost. Skildir said I would grow to be someone people hated, and I think he was right. I hid my rooms and people stare at me in the hallway and there is no love in their gazes. No one who would call me friend has come to speak to me, so I must only assume I had no friends. I am different, I am Other, and as no friends have come to speak to me neither have any who would love me in the way of men and women. Is that who I was, Mamma? A lonely, strange person, too powerful and too different, who went mad and could only be saved like this?”

Loki can barely speak, wrapping his arms around himself to hold himself together, even as Mamma stares at him in horror. She does not deny it, is not quick enough to say no, and all Loki suspected he now knows to be true.

He crashes to the floor, sobbing.

Mamma steps around the table and kneels next to him. Though he recoils from her touch once, twice, Loki is a coward and not strong enough to pull away a third time.

.

That night, held in his mother’s arms in the warm security of her bed, Loki dreams of a terrible storm on a long, empty plain of desert. Rain is in his eyes, streaming down his neck and under his clothes, but that is second to this strange feeling, like he’s floating. Far below him his brother, wild-eyed and roaring with laughter, is fighting Fury’s warriors through a strange white maze. Loki knows what he’s fighting for. Just beyond he can see Mjolnir sitting like a princess from one of Thor’s books, awaiting her knight to save her. He wants to cheer but can’t – all he can do is look down the sight of his bow. Do you want me to slow him down, sir, or are you sending in more guys for him to beat up?

Phil is in his ear, steady as anything, but there’s a reason why he’s the head G-Man, why he’s got clearance that doesn’t technically exist – calm as shit, he says, Wait, I want to see this and the staggering amount of competence and skill just does it for him, because everyone actually stops – hopped-up Swede tearing through their encampment and all Phil has to say is hold on and everyone holds on and wow, yeah, he’s done for, but somehow ironically in a good way because Phil is his.

The Swede makes it to Excalihammer and tries to do what all of them have not-so-secretly tried in the past two days – pick it up. He doesn’t succeed, because of course he doesn’t, and Thor roars in agony.

A dark-haired man watches from beside Mjolnir, his eyes hooded with something unnamable. His hair is a long tangle around his face, his leathers ravaged as if he has been in a great war. His long-fingered hands are laced gently in front of him, and he watches Thor scream without emotion.

His mouth, a nightmare of black thread and blood, has been sewn shut.