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1.
“For the last time, Thor, I just want to be left alone,” Loki said, pulling up short in front of his room. He turned his back to the golden doors and crossed his arms, glaring.
“You’re hiding something,” Thor said, frowning.
“What in the world would I be hiding, brother?”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Thor said. Then he amended, “More than usual.”
“Did you consider that maybe I just don’t want to trail after you and your friends all day?”
The frown on Thor’s face grew more pronounced, accompanied by a furrowing of the eyebrows.
“You don’t trail after us…” Thor said, but it was a weak protest.
Loki rolled his eyes. “Goodbye, brother.”
With that, Loki reached out and opened the door to his chambers.
Three kittens tumbled out, one over the other, onto the carpeted floor of the hallway.
“I see,” Thor said, raising a delighted eyebrow.
“I—they were—Mother told me that—”
But Loki’s sputtering fell on deaf ears: Thor was now kneeling on the ground, three kittens clawing their way up his chest and shoulders.
2.
“This one is Larkspur,” Loki said, gesturing at the small white kitten, her eyes the color of her namesake. He hesitated for a moment, expecting Thor to react unkindly to the name he’d chosen, but Thor only nodded, tickling little Larkspur’s tummy with a gentle finger.
“And this one?” Thor asked, lifting an arm, from which hung a scrawny black thing, his wide yellow eyes blinking up at Thor as he gnawed fiercely at Thor’s skin.
“Charcoal,” Loki said, and winced again.
Thor nodded, serious.
The last one was hiding in the shelter of Loki’s crossed legs. Thor reached over and took him by the scruff of the neck and put the little beast close to his face, where they regarded each other for a moment. Then the kitten, golden as a dollop of sunlight, opened his tiny pink mouth to yawn, uninterested in Thor. Loki had to smile.
“That one is Marigold,” Loki said, thinking of his mother’s gardens. Secretly, Loki had named the kitten Thori, for his coloring, but it would not do to let Thor know that.
“They’re good names,” Thor proclaimed, magnanimous, and Loki felt inexplicably warm.
The rest of the afternoon was given over to playing and roughhousing. Thor and Loki and the kittens basked in the heat of the sun, high in the sky, and they let the kittens run roughshod over them, soft, tiny paws on their faces, rough tongues on their cheeks.
Loki watched Thor scoop Larkspur up, holding her to his chest, and ached sweetly at the sight.
Later on, Loki would remember it to be one of his few golden memories of Asgard that was untainted by bitterness.
3.
Thor stopped in front of the doors to Loki’s room, facing it as one would face an insurmountable challenge.
It had taken him a week to pick up the courage to come here.
He was not ready.
He doubted he ever would be.
He reached out and put a hand on one of the doors, feeling the smooth grain underneath his palm. For a moment, he wondered if Loki had left behind some locking charm, something that would prevent anyone from entering his personal chambers, but Thor only needed to push, gently, and the door opened.
No seidr left behind. Thor almost wanted to weep.
He swallowed, steeling himself, and stepped into his dead brother’s room.
Almost immediately, Thor was taken by a wave of emotion so cutting and so deep that he found it hard to breath past it. He stood at the threshold, staring blankly at his brother’s personal effects—his books still in their shelves, the magical ingredients strewn messily across his desk, the tapestry he and Frigga had woven one summer, depicting her garden in full bloom.
Thor did not know how long he stood there, heart impossibly heavy, chest impossibly sore, his tears dripping down his cheeks.
Only that he was startled out of his grief by a soft, gentle mewl.
A white cat, slender as a fish, wound between his legs, purring loudly.
Larkspur. But where were her siblings?
Thor leaned down and picked her up before he could stop himself, and she nestled in his arms with a rumble of contentment. Holding her close against his chest, Thor began to walk through Loki’s rooms, looking for the other cats.
Charcoal, grown fat with age and dark as his namesake, was in Loki’s inner chamber, his bedroom, where he kept his prized possessions: dusty spellbooks and phoenix feathers, flowers spelled to keep from drying out, glowing rocks that Thor could not name.
The cat meowed loudly when he saw Thor, rolling onto his belly for scratches.
And little Marigold, the smallest of the three, was asleep in Loki’s closet, nestled on a bundle of red cloth.
Thor realized, when Marigold rose and sprung nimbly to the floor, that it was one of his old cloaks.
Thor had not seen these cats in years. He had thought Loki had given them away to some maid or stableboy, but here they were: healthy and happy and whole.
Even in death, Thor thought, as the cats clambered upon him, their soft, warm bodies pressing insistently up against him, his brother was full of surprises.
4.
Loki awoke.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and another moment for him to figure out what time it was—there was no natural light in the dungeons, but he took stock of his body, of his seidr, and decided that it was the middle of the night.
He turned over in his bed—annoyingly soft and plush, and Loki did not have enough pride to sleep on the floor—and stopped short as he spied a pair of eyes glowing in the darkness.
Meow.
Loki blinked.
Gingerly, he reached out, touching soft fur, and a warm, purring body.
Charcoal jumped into his lap as he sat up, butting his head up against Loki’s hand. There was another short growl, and Larkspur clambered onto the bed. Marigold lay himself across Loki’s slippered feet.
Loki swallowed, feeling his throat go tight. He had all but forgotten these animals. Hadn’t so much as spared a thought for them. Hadn’t really had a chance to, in his defence.
Who had taken care of them while he was gone? Frigga? Thor?
His breath was growing ragged, shallow, too loud in the silence of his cell, in the oppressive darkness of Asgard’s dungeons.
Charcoal blinked up at him, yellow eyes luminous, and Loki swallowed down his guilt, his fear, his self-loathing.
He lifted a shaking hand, and pet his cat.
5.
Loki stretched out on Thor’s bed, languid, pleasantly well-fucked. He rolled over to his stomach and listened to the sound of his brother showering in the tiny bathroom of the ship. If Loki had had his way, they would have fit themselves into the chamber, but Thor was too large (pleasantly so, and Loki’s body knew it well), and Loki wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed.
The motion set the bottle stopper—abandoned amongst the sheets—rolling to the floor beneath the bed.
Loki reached a hand to the floor to pick it up, and touched something furry.
Thor chose that moment to exit the bathroom, toweling off his hair but leaving the rest of his body bare to the world.
Loki, unfortunately, had no eyes for him at the moment.
“That’s a cat,” Thor said. As if on cue, there were two more high-pitched mewls, and Larkspur and Charcoal crawled out from under the bed.
Marigold, in Loki’s arms, meowed plaintively.
Thor picked Charcoal and Larkspur up in either hand, depositing them on the bed as he sat down.
He licked his lips, pondering. Loki wasn’t looking at him, focused determinedly on scratching Marigold beneath the chin.
“Brother...where did you get these cats?”
Loki shrugged, helpless. “Mother gave them to me. For safekeeping, she said. Now I’m wondering if we were the ones they were meant to keep safe.”
“She gave you magic cats,” Thor said, bewildered, and Loki could not help himself: he laughed, then, and could not stop laughing. If there were tears mingled among the laughter, then that was just the way of things.
It was not quite like that idyllic day in Asgard: a field of stars instead of that bright sun, and they were older now, the cats quieter, drawn more easily to contentment. Loki closed his eyes, tucking Marigold against his chest as he kissed Thor’s neck. Maybe, Loki thought, contentment wasn’t such a complicated thing after all.
It was not Asgard, and it never would be again: but not all was lost.
With Thor by his side, and Larkspur and Charcoal and Marigold resting upon their bodies like little satellites of warmth, they would find a home again.