Chapter Text
“There's a little story I’d like to tell
About this little boy who came from Hell
Sit right there and listen real good
I'll tell you all the ways he's misunderstood.”
– Palaye Royale, “Mr. Doctor Man.”
He was cold, which was ironic, considering his true form. Loki hadn't realized Frost Giants could get cold. Was it because he was dying? He’d died before, in the Void. He remembered how peaceful it had been, after. There had been no pain. There had only been darkness and the feeling of someone holding him, and he’d never felt more safe, cradled in oblivion. The dark had promised to keep him, all of him, and he’d felt relieved, believing it.
(He should have known that it was nothing but a lie.)
Then he was brought back, to the Other leering over him, and Loki learned the true meaning of suffering. It was there, on Sanctuary, that he learned what true monsters were.
He longed for death long after.
During the long months of screaming himself raw as he was being unmade, begging for an end to the agony, for Thor to come and save him, yet he never came. As he was made into a new man, built strong on pain and rage (and hate, so much hate, that it was a poison in his blood, infecting all else.)
When he arrived on Midgard and every part of him ached, exhaustion reaching down to his very bones, and nothing in his mind was quiet. As he fought with Midgard’s Avengers, and his mind was torn in two – kill them, put on a show, crush them, warn them, give the Titan the Tesseract, hurt them like they hurt you – threatening to drive him mad. When he stabbed Thor and smiled with tears in his eyes, knowing that he had nothing left (he’d known there would be no victory, no matter what he did – you lack conviction – but to fail, oh to fail, death would be a mercy.) After the green beast had thrown him about like a dog shaking a rat in its jaws, and suddenly the noise was gone and he realized that he had lost.
He was dragged back to Asgard, sentenced to a life of imprisonment for his crimes, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Titan came for him. He’d wished for the axe. It would’ve been the end, and Thanos couldn’t reach him then. He will make you long for something as sweet as pain –
Thor was holding him as he was dying, pleading with him to stay, and he didn’t long for it now. Stupidly, he felt loved cradled in his brother’s arms, and he wanted to feel bitterness instead – of course you would love me now, when I’m dying – but he couldn’t quite manage it. He watched as the anguish filled his brother’s eyes, and thought this isn’t what I wanted. Remorse settled heavy and aching in his heart, and he felt the sudden need to tell him everything, all the things he’d left unsaid, but all he seemed able to force out was I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
The cold was in every part of him, and frantically he glanced at his hands, but they remained Aesir pale. Would the All-Father’s glamour stay with him, even in death? It would be fitting, he supposed, to die as he’d lived: a monster, no matter the lie that was his skin. Yet he wondered. Would the Norns allow themselves to be fooled and deem him worthy? Would Valhalla’s gates open wide for him, with Frigga waiting there for him with open arms? He’d believed his words when he said them to the Kursed beast, that they would see each other in Hel. And yet, he couldn’t help but hope for a different ending to his tale.
Thor murmured reassurances to him, and he stared up at him only for his gaze to inexplicably veer to the right. His heart seized inside his chest, and he was hit with a pain far greater than being impaled, or of the Kursed’s poison surging through his veins.
Frigga stood there, bathed in golden light. She smiled down at him sadly, and there was a deep pain in her eyes, yet also so much love. Loki felt something in him slacken, a fear going unrealized. There was no anger there, nor blame; she had come to guide him to Valhalla.
Take me home, Amma, he thought to her, and she closed her eyes, as if in regret. I’m ready. Take me home.
“I’ll tell Father what you did here today,” Thor told him gently, his voice brittle, and Loki’s gaze returned to him. Let me give you this, his eyes seemed to say. There was a grief on his face that Loki had seen once before, as they both dangled over an abyss, and Loki had allowed himself to fall.
He felt an otherworldly calm come over him, and he knew he was close.
“I didn’t do it for him.” It was a truth that startled him: he hadn’t done it for Odin, for his approval, or his love. He’d done it only for Thor; his brother, no matter how hard he had tried to deny it, whom he hated, yet loved even more. He couldn’t tell him everything, but he could tell him that. A final parting gift, no matter how meaningless it truly was at the end.
He closed his eyes, and the last thing he heard as he slipped away was Thor howling, and he thought I'm a fool, I'm a fool.
Tell me if you’ve heard this story before. It went like this:
A boy woke stretched on an altar, like an offering to divine gods, in a church both beautiful and dark. Everything in him ached, and everything in him was wrong, and the first thing he did was weep. He wept with tears that were cold instead of warm, that tasted of ash instead of salt, and for a long time (perhaps a moment, or perhaps an eternity) tears were all he knew. Loss beat in him like second heart, singing its terrible song of tragedy, and the boy didn’t know what he’d lost, but he knew it had been something vital. There were fragments in his mind, colors of vibrant red and sad, sad blue, a feeling of home and a feeling of rage, hate, lovelovelove, but he couldn’t make sense of any of them. He knew nothing, nothing at all, and when he opened his eyes to see the world he’d come into, there was nothing familiar, only unknown. He tried to remember, but no memories came to him.
The cloth beneath him was bleached pure and white (while he was not) and there were golden statues all around him, with gazes that were almost condemning (and he was the condemned).
It went like this:
The boy who lost, the boy who ached, looked down upon himself and saw a monster. He saw skin of deep, cobalt blue, etched in secrets, and claws black and sharp as jagged glass. Great horns rested heavy upon his head, long and curved like crescent moons, and he could feel himself breaking beneath their weight. He was cold, like his very bones were forged in ice, and he shivered (but not with cold, he was the cold). Horror slid sickly in his blood, and he was overcome with a wave of revulsion so potent it threatened to unmake him. He looked down upon himself, and everything inside him screamed monster.
A sound pierced the holy hush, raw and anguished, and it was the boy (the monster) howling with everything he had. He howled at the moonlit ceiling, the high arches of decorated stone. At the gleaming, golden statues, the art in colors so rich its reality paled in comparison. At the rows and rows of empty pews. He howled at everything, and at nothing, and he was consumed by his despair. He howled, and there was no answer, only an echo thrown back at him, empty and mocking.
It went like this:
A woman, an ordinary woman who was an ordinary maid, heard screaming inside an empty church. The sound was terrible and haunting, and it chilled her to the bone, making her want to scream along with it. Yet despite her every instinct telling her to flee, she ran toward it, following like it was a siren song calling her name, and found something strange.
A boy with black hair sat naked atop an altar, bowed over and screaming himself raw into his hands. Horns grew wicked from his head, and his skin was blue. For a moment everything in her froze in dread, because there was nothing holy in the way he screamed. It was a long and wretched keen, and she tasted blood in the back of her own throat as she listened to it. For a moment, her mind screamed demon, and she was sick with fear.
But she had been a mother once, and she knew what a child sounded like. A child, howling with grief and despair, horror and hate, alien in every way, but a child nevertheless.
It went like this:
A woman pulled a naked monster screaming into her lap, and sang it a lullaby. She sang, and she stroked, running her hands down a back knotted with scar tissue, and where she touched, warmth bloomed. Pale, milky white chased away the blue, the horns receding until only smooth skin remained, and the screams quieted to nothing. She glanced down and saw a boy who looked human (but she knew he was not), and when the boy opened his eyes, they were a clever, vibrant green. His young face was streaked with tears, and she wondered why she’d ever feared he was something monstrous.
He gazed up at her in wonder and disbelief, like she was a prayer that he never thought would be answered, and it made something in her chest ache. She held onto him tighter and resolved to never let him go.
Who are you? Where did you come from? she asked him, and she felt the boy stiffen underneath her hands. She shushed him, combing her fingers through soft hair, and he closed his eyes, practically melting in her arms, like he was starved of a kind touch. She studied the ruin of his body, the jagged and angry scarring that spanned his back, the mottled burns and what looked to be the remains of a brand on the back of his neck, nestled in his hair. It was a savage portrayal of violence, cruel and deliberate, and she felt sickened by it.
God help me, she thought to herself in horror, who could do such a thing to a child?
A monster.
In sudden fear, she searched the empty church to see if the ones who had done this remained, but they appeared to be alone. The boy was still and quiet in her arms, though his face was troubled, and he clung to her in a sad sort of way, like he was afraid of being left alone. Like she was the first shred of safety he’d been given in a long time, and he didn’t want to lose it. She feared he had escaped someone terrible. If he had, then he could be found by them again, and she couldn’t let that happen. She made her decision.
Gently, she prodded him, and he opened his eyes slowly, as if in dread. She smiled down at him, brushing the hair out of his face, and whispered, I’m going to take you somewhere safe, I promise. Can you stand?
He nodded.
It went like this:
A woman helped a boy (a monster, but she didn’t believe it anymore) stand on shaking legs, the altar cloth wrapped tight around his hips. She caught him when his legs gave out beneath him, and slung a thin arm around her shoulders to help him walk. He moved awkwardly, like a newborn foal on unsteady limbs, like every step pained him. She would’ve carried him if she could, but although he was almost painfully thin, he weighed as much as a grown man, and all she could do was help him walk.
Slowly, they made their way through the church (the boy flinching at shadows, and she’d never been afraid of the dark, but with his pulse fluttering like a frightened bird’s beneath her fingers, suddenly every shadow became sinister). They came out into cold night air, and she realized he hadn’t made a sound the entire time. She would’ve thought he was mute, if he hadn’t been howling when she found him.
I am Berta, she told him, hoping to coax something out of him. What is your name?
The boy was silent, and she thought he would remain so, but then –
I don’t know, he answered softly.
He had a lovely voice, refined with an accent she couldn’t place. Yet he spoke like a native, and she wondered again who he was, and where he’d come from. Why was he inside a closed church, wearing nothing and howling like a wounded animal? What had been done to him?
She paused, considering him, and he stared back at her, his face apprehensive.
Then until you do know, I shall call you Andel. Is that all right?
…Yes, the boy replied.
Not long after Berta had gotten the boy she named Andel into her flat, and was finding him clothes to wear, a portal appeared in the middle of the now-empty cathedral. It blazed a fiery orange, showering sparks along its circular edge, and out walked a man, a sorcerer by the name of Doctor Stephen Strange. On the other side of the world, he had felt a great upheaval that could only have been made by magic, and followed it to its source. He surveyed the church, and found nothing there, only faint traces of the magic he’d originally felt. Yet when he attempted to grasp it, to use it to track its bearer, it slipped through his fingers like smoke, and he felt a chill course through him.
It felt like death. Like power, like change on a dark horizon.
It felt like chaos.
In a London apartment, sometime in the night, a god woke in a cold sweat beside the woman he loved. He could feel his heart pounding inside his chest, and he didn’t know why. The air tasted strange, like it was charged with seidr, and he felt as if something momentous had occurred. Glancing outside the window, he stiffened.
Streaked across the sky was a familiar shade of green. It glowed like a beacon meant only for him, and then it was gone, and Thor didn’t know what it meant.
At the end of the Void, a Titan turned his gaze toward Earth, and planned.