Work Text:
“I wish to start a garden,” Loki tells Thor.
Thor looks up from the reports he was scanning over, his frown of concentration deepening. “A garden? What for?”
“To grow things.”
“Yes, that I had assumed.” Thor tosses aside the tablet with a sigh and slumps back in his chair. It was less grand than the throne-like seat that had sat in Odin's study. That had been carved from the branch of Yggdrasil Odin once hung from and had taken two years to be completed. Thor’s was simple and sturdy; built for practicality and comfort, not status. Loki had conjured it for him when he and the other sorcerers built the keep on New Asgard from the earth and the ozone. The only flare he’d added were the twin serpent heads at the end of the arms; his little joke. Thor gripped them when he was stressed. Loki noted he did so a lot.
“Is this one of those times where I am to wonder at your true motivations until a time you wish for me to know them?”
“Perhaps.” Loki unfolds his hands to clasp them behind his back, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Or perhaps I simply wish to garden.”
“Then you may have any land you so wish,” Thor says, and Loki is both pleased and annoyed he had given in so quickly. He had many counter arguments and indignant remarks prepared. “Just let Sif know. She’s scouting areas for the training ground and might have found something appropriate for you in the process. What are you planning on growing?”
“Oh, many things!” Loki spouts. “Many, many things. Flowers, vegetables, fruits, herbs. What delights my fingers will grow! And do not trouble fair Lady Sif, I have already found some land I fancy. Near the stables but far enough the stench won’t bother me and Norns knows, I’ll have my fair share of muck at hand to spread.”
The look Thor levels him with effectively topples Loki’s tower of perfectly constructed waffle. “And this will all be nice, normal produce, yes?” he says, the eyebrow above his patch raised. “Nothing I need to concern myself with?”
“You needn’t spare my little plot another thought after I leave this room.”
Thor sighs again, sinking further into the chair, his grip on the arms tight. He looks far older than he had any right to. “Loki…” he starts.
“You fret too much, brother,” Loki says, spinning on his heels to leave. “What have I done to deserve such mistrust?” He did not care to listen to the list Thor begins to shout through the door Loki closes on him.
*
Gardening, it turns out, is hard work. There was dirt to be tilled, fences to be built and weeds to be pulled. A back breaking enterprise.
Loki was up at dawn and the sun had barely crested the sky before his shirt was soaked through and his body exhausted. When he mops his brow with a sleeve, he isn’t sure if it's left any drier. But it is pain for a cause, and after a few days labour he is left with a fenced off area the size of a field ready to be sowed.
“So, it’s true then, you're starting a garden," comes a voice from behind him and Loki turns from his position in the dirt to see Valkyrie leaning against the newly erected fencing, looking amused. He’s annoyed she got so close without him hearing. "I thought Thor might have been trying to be funny again.”
“I’m afraid, as with all your attempts at humour, I too am missing the joke.”
Valkyrie shrugs with an inelegant heft of a shoulder. “Dunno, just you… in the mud, actually working. It’s funny.”
Loki rises from his knees, without bothering an attempt to dust off the thick mud that clings to them, and smiles at her snidely. “My garden will not grow any hops or grapes to be fermented so there’s really nothing of interest for a drunkard like you here.”
“Why not use magic?”
“What?” Loki snaps, a little taken aback. They usually traded insults for a few rounds before anything of actual worth was said.
“To plough the earth, build the fences. Why did you do it by hand?”
Loki rubs his palms together, unsure of how to answer. There was no point in denying it given how his exertion was written in the mud on his clothes and sweat on his brow. “I suppose I just wanted to feel it.”
Valkyrie nods, apparently understanding his reasoning better than Loki did. He wishes he’d just lied. “Well, it’s not much of a garden," she says, squinting into the sun as she surveys the area.
“And what does the muscle for hire know about such things,” Loki scoffs. His back was starting to ache and his skin itches for a bath to soak in for a year or two.
“About as much as a spoiled brat, I'm guessing."
The mud Loki flings at her misses by about a foot.
*
Loki was still a child when he realised he had many secrets. Things he’d rather keep to himself forever, or at least until a more convenient or rewarding time for him to share them. So, he’d created a pocket for himself, a hole carved out of the universe just for him, where all his secrets could be kept.
It had proven very useful over the centuries, and after such a long time there were many treasures to be found there. Some things Loki hid out of greed, some out of shame, and some because he knew they may one day be of use.
One such a thing had been plucked out of Idun’s garden when he was very young, after being scolded by the witch and told that greedy children shouldn't ask for more than what they were given. Even back then, Loki had marvelled at the hypocrisy of the one who hoarded all of the god’s source of replenishment to speak of greed.
The soil of New Asgard was lush, rich and fertile, so close in makeup to what once bore fruit for Idun. It was one of the reasons the uninhabited planet had been chosen for their resettlement. Acres of land lay untouched and undisturbed by conscious hands, ripe for seeds to take root and life to grow.
Loki could feel it every time he touched the earth. Life flowing through it; raw and pure. And he would birth it here too.
*
“You’ve a curious selection in your garden, Loki.” Heimdall stands at the ornate, finely carved gate Loki had recently erected, large forearms propped up on the wood, surveying the sea of budding crops that poked up through the soil.
“I suppose.” Loki fixes his face with a smile and sets aside his watering can. He had long since rigged an enchantment to water each crop as is needed, yet he still finds enjoyment in the personal touch. “You know me, I like to keep my options open.”
The afternoon air was crisp but the sun was warming. The hotter months were rapidly approaching, when crops would bloom and Loki’s success would be determined.
“I was always partial to midgardian plums,” Heimdall says, a fond, distant inflection in his voice. “Never could get them on Asgard, we hadn’t the climate for them. Your brother would sometimes bring them back for me from his travels.”
“You should have said, gatekeeper, and I would have planted one for you specially.”
“Hmm.” The watchman’s golden eyes bore into Loki’s, seeing far beyond which was laid before him. “I suspect you’d have no room left for a plum tree, what with such a large apple orchard.”
Loki huffs a laugh and spreads his arms in a pacifying gesture. “Everyone loves apples, do they not?”
“Aye, they do, but not everyone is so keen on surprises and games. Be mindful of that.”
Loki hangs his arms, linking his fingers in a tight knot before him, and contemplates the strangeness of the universe that it had only been a few years since he had encased the gatekeeper in a torrent of ice for daring to defy him, and now here he was, receiving veiled lectures from him while he had dirt under his fingernails. “Sage advice, I’m sure,” he says, voice light and pleasant.
Heimdall nods to himself and pats the gate to leave. “Oh, and Loki?”
Loki stills. “Yes?”
“I think I spot a little space up in the far-left corner for a plum tree.” Loki’s smile falls from his face as soon as Heimdall turns to make his way back to the keep.
*
New Asgard’s first harvest is a bountiful one. The asgardians had worked hard all year to make it so. A feast was thrown in celebration in the keep, the first official display of indulgence and merriment since they had settled here, their population diminished and people possessionless.
“Loki!” Thor cries above the raucous noise of gaiety, pulling him towards the banquet table that heaves with platters upon platters of food. “Show me what here came from your garden, they must be the first things I sample.”
Loki scoffs at his sentimentality, but still points out the root vegetables he had pulled from the ground just that morning, the herbs that season the food from his pots, the desserts that had been made out of the berries he had picked.
He watches Thor eat his fill, indulging in the praise he heaps over every dish. “Your green thumb shouldn’t be so surprising,” Thor laughs, plate clean and Loki’s ego thoroughly sated. “It always was your colour, after all.” There are lines by his eyes and mouth as he smiles, the lifetime of happiness carved into his face as deeply as the fresh grief.
“Tell us, Loki,” Valkyrie calls over to them, arm around some pretty, giggling thing, “when will your apples be ripe enough to be made into cider?” There are cries of agreement and laughter. Loki’s burgeoning garden, particularly it’s orchard, was of interest to many.
“Trees, even magically expedited ones, still take some while to grow,” he says, voice dripping with a constructed charm. “But I doubt your cup will run dry in the meantime.” By means of reply, Valkyrie empties an entire barrel of mead to loud and ruckus encouragement, and for once Loki is glad of the crude distraction from the woman.
“I’m proud of you, Loki,” Thor says into the quiet of their shared walk back to separate quarters. It was late into the night or very early in the morning depending on how you looked at it. The celebrations were still going on yet they had both had their fill. “Am I allowed to say that?”
“You may,” Loki says, letting the warmth of those words wash over him and seep into his skin to be digested and picked apart later. “Though I must warn you, you’re coming very close to maudlin.”
Thor chuckles. He might be drunk but it’s difficult to tell, he’s grown softer over the year, despite how much it’s hardened him. “Ah well, you’ll have to allow it of me tonight. Seeing all our progress laid out like that, all the work we’ve put into making New Asgard a success, it’s left me in a sentimental mood.” He rubs a hand down his mouth to the scratch of beard on his chin. “And yet there is still so much more work to be done. My desk is never cleared of reports to look over or orders to approve. It seems the more we achieve, the more there is to do.”
Loki scoffs and raises his eyes to whichever heavens lay above this new realm. “Brother, if I were to tell the you of ten years ago that you would one day leave a celebratory banquet early while speaking of paperwork, you’d be so dumbfounded I might finally have a chance to best you.”
Thor snorts and bumps his shoulder into Loki’s. The sun is rising in the east behind them and their shadows blur together with Thor’s movement, making their shapes indistinguishable. “Are you implying I’ve grown boring, brother?”
“Merely noting a change. Might even go so far as to call it maturity.”
Thor yawns, unguarded and wide like a lion's maw. “I think I’ll add self-reflection to tomorrow’s very long To Do list,” he says, voice weary. “It is too late in the day for it now.” He then levels Loki with a considering look. “Though if we’re to speak of change, don’t think I haven’t noticed your efforts this last year, Loki. You’ve been incredibly diligent working on your garden along with your aid in getting everything else off the ground. Its success is hardly surprising.”
Loki lets out a considering hum. “Don’t you mean suspiciously diligent?”
“Still having trouble accepting compliments, I see,” Thor says, his single eye twinkling knowingly in a way Loki finds both irritating and comforting.
“Compliments I like, the motivations behind them I question.” They’ve come to a stop before Thor’s rooms. The journey to them was always shorter than Loki remembered.
“Well, stew on that one for a while then get back to me on whether you liked it,” Thor says. The hand he places on Loki’s shoulder is still, somehow, startling. Loki finds himself unguarded as he looks back at his brother’s smile. “You know my door is always open to you.”
Outside in the earth, stems are taking root, buds on trees are beginning to unfurl, flowers turn their heads upwards towards an emerging sun. Life that Loki planted is growing where before there was none.
Here in the keep before Thor’s kindness, Loki feels like he’s dying.
“Goodnight, Thor,” he says.
“Goodnight, Loki.”
Loki listens to Thor moving inside his rooms for a little while before retreating back to his own, a long way down the corridor.
*
The winter that arrives on New Asgard is white and bitter, but Loki’s garden retains a pleasant, sunny climate. He sits under the canopy of his tall apple trees, their branches heavy with ripe, green fruit. There’s a mug of spiced mulled cider in his hands that he sips from occasionally. Thor’s voice has been calling out to him for a while, but tucked away this deep in his orchard, Loki can enjoy the anonymity of the trees a little while longer.
“There you are,” Thor says, finally spotting him. “Did you not hear me calling to you?” There are droplets in his hair from melted snow and his cheeks are rosy from an absent cold.
“I suppose I mustn’t have.” Thor doesn’t argue the matter and takes a seat next to Loki on the bench, not waiting to be invited. It doesn’t bother Loki like it once might have.
“Warm in here,” Thor points out needlessly, tugging his cloak away from his neck. His flushed skin is golden and bronzed, as though he had been sitting beneath this sunlight for months instead of the bleak winter outside. “I can see why you’ve been hiding away in here so much lately. Might get you to put the same enchantment in my study, my hands have been frozen all day.”
“Idiot, you should have said,” Loki scolds, annoyed at Thor suffering away in silence. Stoicism was such an irritating trait. He sets his mug on the grass and holds out his hand expectantly, beckoning with impatient fingers. Thor obediently gives him a hand to rub warmth back into. It was something their mother used to do and it became a little act of kindness that’d stuck with them. An irony, given that Loki’s real hands never got cold.
“That cider of yours is very popular,” Thor comments, watching Loki’s face as his hands work.
“Is it?” Loki had perfected a tone of innocent curiosity in his first century. “I pay it little mind. I just give the brewery the apples and let them get on with it. Compliment the Valkyrie if you must, she’s the one who pestered me into it.”
“Is that right?” Thor says, and it sounds less of a question and more a snare for Loki to tangle himself in. “I was just speaking with the brewer, she told me you’d supplied her with a brand-new cider press as far back as the spring.”
Loki kneads the spaces between Thor’s knuckles. There had been a scar there during the summer that was now absent. “Who do you think supplied half the tools on New Asgard, Thor? Are you forgetting we arrived with nothing, to an empty planet?”
“Aye, your talents have not been forgotten, Loki. Nor your generosity.”
Thor’s skin has heated under Loki’s touch but still he hasn’t let go of his hand.
“A curious thing, your brew,” Thor continues. “I’ve known mead that puts a spring in one’s step, but never one that cured a broken leg before.”
“Strong praise indeed,” Loki says, eyes fixed downwards. “They should write that on the label.” Thor encloses his hand around Loki’s, stilling his movements. His thumb rubs between the mountains of his palm in a soothing motion.
“Loki,” he says, letting the name fill the air for a moment as he waits for Loki to meet his gaze. “Come now, why be so coy on this matter? Did you think I wouldn’t notice I no longer wake up of a morning with my back aching and head splitting? That the populous seems to have collectively lost a combined age of about a century since they started to drink the cider from your apples? This is hardly one of Vafþrúðnir’s riddles, brother, the dots weren’t that difficult to connect.”
Loki pulls his hand free and folds his arms across his chest. “And what, here you are to complain about it? Over a healthier citizenry? What next, cursing when the sky is blue or the grass is green?”
“I’ve not come here to have a row,” Thor says, his voice suddenly weary and pacifying and Loki can’t decide which he hates more. “Though truth be told, I’m not sure if I should be thanking you or giving you a smack.”
“If you’re asking for my preference, I’d go with thanking.”
Thor huffs a laugh, shaking his head, eyes turned down to his now empty hands. “Every time I think we have an understanding, you pull the rug out from under me once again.”
“Your people are healthy, Thor,” Loki says, staring at his profile, silently willing him to look back. “Why pick it apart? Can’t you just be happy with what you’ve got?” It’s a hypocritical question, and one that Loki has been asking himself for decades.
Thor does look at him then and Loki suddenly wishes he hadn’t. “I don’t understand why you just didn’t tell me. Idun’s apples, Loki… this is no game, no trifling thing to be played with. For the people, there is nothing more sacred.”
Loki scoffs. “You think I don’t know that? They mourn that witch’s loss as keenly as the Allfather’s. So, what would they have said if I were the one to announce I had a way of bringing back her supply? The trickster? The deceiver? To be told that to do so I would have to rip apart her design and reshape it into something of my own for it to grow here. These aren’t golden apples, Thor, they burned along with her and the rest of Asgard. They are my creation, not as good as hers of course, but it’ll do. It’ll keep us alive.”
“So, what, better to ask for forgiveness than permission, is that it?”
“I don’t recall asking for forgiveness,” Loki says coolly.
Thor says nothing for a moment. The air is still and Loki is sure his time in New Asgard is about to reach its end. Then quietly Thor says, “You underestimate them and yourself. They would have accepted your gift to them, the lifeline you provided us, willingly, gratefully. As they have done with everything you have given them and as they do now. You are beloved, Loki, by the people and by me.”
Loki’s eyes sting and he looks away, up to the blinding artificial sun to let that be the reason why they burn. “What nonsense you speak.”
“If you’d left your garden in the last few weeks, you’d know that it’s not.”
Loki huffs a bitter little sound. “How cruel you are, Thor, that even your imagined version of me I cannot compete with. You think this a grand, selfless gesture, who’s only sin is being given in a deceitful way. To what? Protect my pride? I am well versed in acting the pariah, its sting is quite blunt to me now. No, I did not conceal my actions out of fear of being hated, but for fear of being stopped. For I needed to do this.” His throat is tight as he swallows and he looks back to Thor, his cheeks wet. “Because you’re not to grow old, Thor. Everyone else could burn and rot for all I care, but you, you are never to wither away and die before me. I can stand anything but that.”
“Oh, Loki,” Thor says, letting out a laugh that sounds like it was punched out of him. “You silly, brilliant fool.” There is nothing more splendid than Thor as he smiles. Any fate or punishment Loki must endure will be worth it to know that it will continue to exist for millennia now because of him.
Whatever reply Loki might have formed dies on the lips Thor claims as he kisses him beneath the apple trees.
It leaves Loki stunned, frozen, until Thor kisses the tears from his cheeks too, then he's laughing and pulling Thor close so not even the sunlight can slip between them.
“I promise not to grow old, if you promise to no longer keep secrets from me,” Thor murmurs and Loki chuckles again.
“What a foolish promise,” he smiles but still seals it with another kiss. He weaves a hand into Thor’s gold spun hair that falls beyond his shoulders and cups his jaw to drink in the love Thor pours into his open, starved mouth.
The garden is lush and new and verdant, and Loki and Thor are old and new, and together have outlived one world and will do so again.