Chapter Text
He wasn’t panicking. He wasn’t. His body was shaking in small ways – a humming in the shoulder that he wanted to shake off, a restlessness in the legs, a tightness everywhere that was holding everything in, holding him in, keeping his breathing from going into overdrive of real panic.
He was in Asgard. Not Midgard. Not the Sanctuary. Not the Void. Not Jotunheim, that cursed place where it all began. He really should’ve kept his mouth shut, he should’ve closed his eyes and let Thor take the throne, consequences be damned. He should have left it all be as it was, and then maybe he would have lived out his days without ever setting foot in the unearthly cold and ice of Jotunheim and none of it would have happened. He could have drunk himself merrily away, playing cruel tricks on everyone around him, a mere court jester in prince’s clothes. But no. Thanos would ever find his way toward the Nine Realms, with or without Loki’s unwilling aid, doggedly pursuing the Infinity Stones and all they meant to him. The Nine Realms would fall, and Loki with them.
There was a time when Loki didn’t want to live. He let go and fell, and for a while he kept falling into blissful nothingness. But eventually even that mercy was stripped away, as he realised that he only wanted to end his life, not truly die – there was a difference. A prince of Asgard, the mightiest of empires, has nowhere to run, not really. Loki could hide himself, and others, from Heimdall’s ever-watching gaze, but only for a time and that time cost him. So run hard as he might, he would always be found and dragged back, to his duties as Second In Line For The Throne. He knows, he tried. He never realised how right he was, in the hunch that haunted him for centuries, that he was truly only that – a placeholder, an assurance for the safety of Asgard, a Plan B in case things ever go wrong, which they never did for the Realm Eternal. Until now, he supposed.
When he made it back to Asgard and managed to outwit Odin himself, he only thought of ensuring his own freedom and survival. When Thor refused the throne (his brother chose the worst time to grow wiser), Loki was still delirious in his glee of finally making the biggest, funniest joke in all the realms – the lying Jotun trickster on the throne, and not a soul suspects it! All the reverence Asgard held for Odin, now ready at his feet. But he came to his senses soon enough, and now here he was, shaking off a not-panic and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. It is the middle of the night, and the stars are shining as bright as ever through the open window. It’s warm, but Loki doesn’t feel it.
“What am I doing? Oh Norns, what am I doing?” – Loki clasps his head tight, as if that would bring answers. Instead of gaining freedom, he managed to chain himself to the bloody golden chair and all the lies it reigned over. He could walk away and let it all burn. There is no crevasse, no barren moon… Really though, was there not? The universe has many moons, and more crevasses. Loki might just manage. But week after week had passed and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stalked the halls when he could, invisible, and found them both familiar and disconcertingly foreign. He kept expecting to stumble across Mother, or Thor, or even Odin. There was no one. It weighed on him that he seemed to miss the people he had grown to resent so long ago. He resented them still, but it was somehow different when they were not there to be resented.
And there were so many other people. Besides the sycophantic courtiers, whom he detested for as long as he could remember and will die detesting, there were soldiers, servants, healers, scholars, artisans and craftsmen, stablehands and kitchen maids, and so many children apprenticed to all of those, and the city and the countryside beyond. Asgard was grand in its architecture, but its people were not many, nowhere as numerous as the sprawling populations of Midgardians. Odin bragged of ten thousand Asgardian blades, of the undefeated legions of Aesir, but really – that was almost half the realm. Fierce warriors, with incredibly powerful weapons skilfully wielded, but so few in the face of a truly formidable foe. Loki thought of the mindless Chitauri flying over the city, and of Thanos himself standing amid the corpses and he found himself staying in his chambers yet another night. Torn between fear and guilt.
Trying to regain his balance and at least do something, Loki got up and walked over to a table that still had his cold dinner and poured himself a cup of wine. Drinking gave him no brilliant new plan, but it calmed the nerves. He must choose, and soon. Putting the empty cup down with a decisive thud, Loki disguised himself as Odin, undid the magical locks on the door, and headed to the library.
By morning, he still had no solution and a whole list of new questions. “That’s something, I suppose,” – Loki huffed to himself as he made sure no one saw him and locked his notes away in the pocket dimension. Questions were better than his mind going in circles over nothing.
The library seemed to have little information on the Chitauri, as expected. They fared from outside the Nine Realms and if anyone travelled that far, few have returned to tell the tale. On Thanos, there seemed to be only what Loki already knew – obsessed with courting Death, wiping half of all populations, eternal conquest, and now the search for the Infinity Stones. Seeking the Infinity Stones himself, barring the three he already knew of, seemed an outright stupid idea – both for the safety of the stones and his own skin. This left him with guarding the known three – the Tesseract here, on Asgard, the Aether deposited with the Collector, at the far edge of the realm, and the Mind Stone…The chair suddenly seemed to rock away, and the desk laden with books and scrolls teetered for a moment. Loki took another deep breath, in and out, and waited for the world to right itself. He was not panicking. He was not, as the Midgardians called it, having flashbacks. The Mind Stone was on Midgard, in the hands of mortal authorities.
He couldn’t do much about the Collector, not without drawing attention to the place, which left, really, only one meaningful strategy. Prepare the Nine Realms, the Asgardian empire, for Thanos’ inevitable arrival, and ensure that when he and his horrid armies get here, Asgard can protect the Tesseract and the Mind Stone. At least long enough until some better plan presents itself. Loki smirked and his fingers drummed a few beats of a march on the desk. He cheated death enough times so far. Perhaps he can extend his good luck to his kingdom too.
***
Over the next few days, Loki shoved as many minor duties of rule onto the security council and various ministers as possible and locked himself up in Odin’s study with a selection of books and old reports pilfered from the library. It would be convenient to put “Odin” into Odinsleep, but he thought it’d be best to keep this manoeuvre for emergencies. So far, grief over Frigga’s passing seemed sufficient pretence. Do not think of her. It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault…
His list of questions grew longer and soon some answers started to emerge.
“By rights, I feel I got the wrong title,” – Loki muttered.
The humans should have named Odin the God of Lies, because lie he did. A more careful examination of official histories of Asgard against records from other realms and Asgard’s own financial and tax records revealed a rather different empire than what he and Thor were raised to believe in and what he saw in the documents he had access to before. It appeared that Asgard was not as strong as it liked to pretend, and nowhere near as noble.
“Oh, to watch Thor learn about this,” – that thought filled him with glee for a few moments, as Loki imagined comprehension dawn on his not-brother’s face, that his entire life has been a lie, mere wishful thinking on Odin’s part, who seemed to have dedicated his life to burying uncomfortable truths in the name of a more secure future, with a myth of a golden age to back it up.
It occurred to Loki, although he loathed to admit it, that Thor, for all his faults and for all the favour he apparently curried with Odin, was also manipulated to exist in just the right way. His own memories suggested that Odin did love Thor, cared for him more deeply than anyone else perhaps, and even this did not stop him from shaping Thor in just the right image.
“But Thor is not a monster. Thor is a respected, accomplished Aesir. Thor belongs on this damned piece of land.” – suddenly angry, Loki paced around the study, reeling from the overlay of the two images: Thor-as-golden-prince, and Thor-as-chesspiece, moved around the board just as Loki was. The feelings boiled within him, muscles straining against the still-healing scabs and stretching the many scars under his clothes and illusions. The pain grounded him in the current reality.
Loki returned to the desk and tried to get back to his reading, but the realisation would not leave him alone. He organised the sprawling mass of paper into something more systematic, but thoughts of Thor, of their youth, of Odin were still spinning around his mind. The universe must have claimed him for its personal jester, because was it not just typical – of Thor, barging in and pushing Loki out of the spotlight, drawing the attention all to himself, even in the domain that Loki thought was his alone? So now it wasn’t just Loki who was lied to, it was Thor, and Frigga, and the whole of Asgard?
“If Thor returns wielding magic, I swear I will….” – but no, that is truly ridiculous. Thor does not have a lick of magical talent, and that is a double-edged sword of a consolation, but consolation, nonetheless. Magic is Loki’s, Loki is magic, and no one can ever challenge that.
***
Sometimes Loki went on for days with no trouble, jumping from task to task with no stray thoughts and all his feelings reigned in. Sometimes, he would unravel and getting through the day without anyone noticing seemed impossible. Rumours of Odin’s excess grief and frequent mentions of his old age kept springing up in the palace and in the city, and Loki did not try too hard to quell them.
It was no danger to his plans, and it was easier to manage things when “Odin” could not make it to some meetings, because Loki could not quite manage to scrape himself off the floor or out of bed. He spent decades, centuries really, ordering his body about and holding it on a tight leash, to keep his back straight and the façade perfect. It was so unfair then, that now was the time his body decided to rebel and take its dues. Some nights he could not sleep, some days he could barely stay awake. Tears would come unbidden, for no apparent reason, and it was impossible to will them away and he had to tolerate waiting for them to pass. He often ached, even after resting, and something always seemed to be off. Going to the healers was out of the question because his ruse could not be discovered just yet, and because he suspected it was not a physical ailment.
Panic also came, although usually with more clear imagery. Like tears, it was also impossible to properly control and he learned to wait it out. He thought that it would be nice to have someone there with him in those moments, wondered if a hand on his back would truly be a comfort. People seemed to find such things comforting. Thor was affectionate with his friends, but Loki did not allow himself the indignity of being seen by his brother in any kind of a weakened state for centuries now. He was already so weak, it felt like any additional… impropriety would taint Thor by association and Loki would be left without company altogether. Except that time in the dungeons, he supposed, but at that time he truly did not care.
Now he found that being called by his own name and being seen as his own person was a luxury he did not appreciate before. Odin was a solitary man. He kept his courtiers and ministers at a distance, and was never friendly with the guards. He was the Allfather. Allfather of Asgard, obviously, does not have panic attacks on the bathroom floor after being unable to sleep for three nights for fear of nightmares. No crevasse, no barren moon…This line and many others he heard from the children of Thanos were growing old on him. How many times must his mind replay them? What purpose does it serve? Surely sound sleep would be more beneficial to his continued survival, why was it not the body’s instinct?
Asgard’s library also turned out to be surprisingly lacking in matters relating to the mind and functions of the brain. There was enough medical information, about various head wounds and their effects, about damage to sight and hearing (with texts favouring wounds gained in battle, not inborn ailments or degeneration from old age, of course).
Nothing useful about sudden fear, about memories playing the same scene over and over and over again, about feeling desperate and like he would die alone in this infinite soundless and lightless void, on this cold and cruel rock, in this overly bright white cell, on this dead and forgotten world. He did die alone, in all those places, many times over. The thought of a supportive hand on his shoulder taunted him. He could almost feel it, enough to fool his mind for just a moment, but it was never real.
Despite “Odin’s” apparently failing health and changing behaviour, no one openly challenged him or his decisions. It was driving Loki crazy, because surely, surely what he is doing, what he is saying, is not worthy of such blind obedience that seems to be given to everything that comes out of Odin’s mouth. He made mistakes, blunders here and there that his councillors and generals must have noticed, must have known about, yet said nothing. During his own short reign as himself, nothing he said or did was trusted as adequate. During his youth, when he attended meetings of various smaller councils, his ideas and proposals were almost always rejected, regardless of how meticulously he planned them. If they were accepted, it was because somebody else, more respectable, had endorsed them. And now, he gets all the respect he ever dreamed of, for free! It was maddening and he did not know whether to laugh at the irony of it all, or to start panicking and packing his bags (metaphorically, his pocket dimension was stocked with necessary supplies ever since Thor and his friends started dragging him on their quests, and inventoried regularly).
Well, if Asgard is so blindly obedient to Odin, Loki would use this to his own benefit and the benefit of the Nine Realms. His study of Asgard’s accounts, histories, and various reports supplemented the knowledge he had accumulated over the years about the running of the empire, and clearly revealed that Asgard was more authoritarian than it let on to its citizens, keeping its colonies under a close watch and an iron heel. The long peace he had known was mostly due to Odin stopping the imperial expansion and keeping the key realms occupied with their preferred industries, and the populus well-fed. The masses saw no reason to protest, and the elites had plenty of opportunities to occupy themselves in scholarship, arts, and backstabbing over local politics.
There were rambling intellectuals on Vanaheim and Alfheim, but the Vanir were carefully kept away from war and inter-realm politics, so there was no one skilled enough to convert ideas into actions. The elves of Alfheim generally preferred ideas and thought experiments to material matters – Loki himself read a few of their brilliant books on government and politics, but those were hard to get – Asgard held a tight rein on the spread of information between realms, and did not encourage interest in scholarship in its citizens, so those books could not hope to reach anyone with practical ambitions.
The dwarves of Nidavelir cared for independence even less than the elves – they liked their engineering and technology and Asgard supplied them with plenty of contracts and great respect for their craftmanship. The dwarves perhaps benefitted the most from being an Asgardian protectorate – and Asgard benefitted the most from mediating all dwarven business with other realms, with a steady stream of fees from sale and lease contracts filling its coffers.
The realms of the giants were isolated from the daily life of the empire, but crucial in their own way. Muspelheim and the fire giants have been supplying their natural resources for centuries now, without much complaint. Their planet was orbiting too close to an aging star, that was slowly but surely expanding – Asgard supplied the dwarven technology to keep the planet from destruction. The fire giants, and old and peaceful race, were grateful and felt no need for greater independence. Asgard kept them safe and maintained peace. Rebels were not welcome on Muspelheim, everyone agreed. Jotunheim’s economy and culture were almost entirely crushed after a thousand years of energy drain and were frozen in their technological development, while Asgard and its favoured colonies steadily advanced. It was clear that once the Jotnar were sufficiently subdued, Odin planned to bestow his generous gifts upon the upper crust of their society and begin a fruitful process of exploiting the icy planet for its natural resources, using the local work force, of course. It was fortunate that the planet was populated by giants and there was no one to tell them about labour laws.
Then there were the two empty realms. Niflheim was known as the realm of the dead, ruled by Hela, but as far as facts went, there weren’t many. You come in, you never leave. It wasn’t some spiritual garbage about souls travelling there after death, of course – it was a prison. As far as Loki surmised from the records, Hela was a sorceress that turned every incoming creature into something that could only survive on Niflheim, bound to the planet for the rest of their lives. There were no taxes coming from Niflheim, just the occasional shipment of rebels and the criminally insane to the planet. Records were sparse, and it seemed there was some kind of personal agreement between Hela and Odin. Hela seemed to never leave the realm, and nothing else was known about her. Svartalheim was the dead realm of the dark elves, uninhabited and uninhabitable now. There was nothing to mine there and nothing to grow – counting it as part of the Nine Realms was sheer vanity.
Finally, there was Midgard. It was mostly left alone so far, as there was nothing of value to Asgard there. Odin liked to occasionally mention it in speeches, as a prime example of the benevolence of Asgard in guarding its weaker, younger brethren worlds. In practice, it was mainly a waypoint for inter-realm travel, as it was conveniently located to all the realms. Travellers passed it quickly, usually without stopping there at all – and so did not care to see the wars, plagues, and famines the humans tended to suffer from, all while under Asgard’s benevolent guardianship.
Of course, it was also a dumping ground for unwanted magical artefacts and banished Asgardians, as the local population could not utilise the first, and was no threat to the second. Well, until the last seventy years, evidently. Midgard was changing, and fast, and was the biggest wildcard in the arrangement. They didn’t know of Asgard except from legend, did not believe in its power, and were a part of the empire as much as Svartalheim was – in name only. Yet, if their growth continued, Odin would have come to collect his dues, and in Loki’s estimation, this would have ended poorly for the humans. The poor things liked their freedom and would not stay bowed even if Odin stamped out the initial resistance. It would have been years of rebellions and sabotage.
To prepare for Thanos’ coming, changes would have to be made. Loki did not know if that would be enough to stop Thanos – in the end, he had to die, because it was clear he would continue seeking the infinity stones and culling planets one by one. But how to get to Thanos, especially if he got his purple grabby hands onto the other Infinity Stones? Right now, Loki had no clue and, frankly, no energy to execute any such daring plans. Someone else will have to do the heavy lifting on that one – but he can make sure to keep the playing field more level. Yes. Reasonable goals, your highness.
Twisting a pen around in his fingers, Loki stretched his legs and sank further into the chair, posture decidedly unroyal. His mind was drifting through the recounting of the situation and the cards available to him, as he gazed at the drifting motes of dust in the afternoon sunlight.
As it was, Asgard was the main military power in the Nine Realms, and it also controlled the industry of the other active realms, acting as the gateway through which all business in the empire must pass. Asgard was strong enough to defend the empire from its neighbours, but in the face of a large enough, and determined enough, army, it would crumble realm by realm – all it took was a strong assault on multiple worlds at the same time. It would take a long time to orchestrate, but the immortal bastard most definitely had time. Asgard’s armies could travel to any realm via the Bifrost instantly, but it would do no good if they did not have the manpower and if that left Asgard itself vulnerable. So, the empire must be made stronger.
One way to do it would be to recruit and train the Vanir, the elves and dwarves – keeping the centralised army and the supremacy of the Aesir. But that would likely lead to increased drive for independence in the provinces over time anyway. So, Loki thought, let’s get ahead of history. Instead of letting the empire crumble, he would orchestrate its breaking – support the independence of each world, ensure the development of their militaries, adapted to the strengths of each race and their weaknesses covered by skills, knowledge, and technology of the others. Midgard and Jotunheim would have to undergo rapid technological advances – this could trigger unfortunate social upheaval, but Jotunheim didn’t really have a choice and Midgard.... They had the mind stone, so Midgard had to stand. The humans might just manage, Loki smirked to himself.
And, of course, Asgard. Asgard has the best technology the Nine Realms can provide, the most bloodthirsty, brutal, and efficient armies. If any army could stand up to Thanos, it would be the Aesir. But they would never understand the changes he is making, and if Loki lost the throne, the next ruler will have to be on board with his plans. Ideally it would be Thor, it seemed like he was catching up, and his current extended stay on Midgard should further disabuse him of the ideals he was raised with. But things might not follow the best-case scenario – so Asgard must be prepared to welcome these changes, so that the next politically-savvy usurper on the throne would want to continue with the plans already set in motion.
Loki rubbed his forehead. It was a lot of work. Propaganda for federalism on Asgard, manoeuvring to get the three key realms to want independence without everything devolving into civil war before Thanos becomes a sufficiently real threat to keep them focused. That would be most unfortunate and play right into Thanos’ hands.
(“Will I ever stop thinking of them?” – The stupid things followed him in nightmares and in his thought; he used to watch the hands instead of bearing eye-contact with the creature, but even that was almost too much. – “Suppose it’s better than be haunted by the bastard’s face?”)
The Casket would have to be returned to Jotunheim and much aid provided – but how to do it without getting shot on sight? Without provoking the giants into a (quite justified) retaliation as soon they have the firepower? Or getting the council to supply aid to them openly – that would be nigh impossible, given the widespread hatred and fear of the frost giants. And of course, Midgard – the obvious candidate to manage that end of things is Thor, but that means regular contact with him, and maybe the Avengers. Will his ruse hold? It must. As soon as he is discovered, everyone will want his head, and he will have to run, resorting to more convoluted schemes to keep things moving as intended. And he felt like he was not going to get better.
Loki hunched over his desk, empty gaze staring over the spread of papers with notes and lists of objectives, intermediate goals, and ideas for concrete steps he should take, the enormity of it all making his already strained mind spin. So much to do, and no clear outcome in sight. No one to discuss this with. Not that he usually had much support in strategizing (or anything?), but now would be a good time to have a second head to counsel with. It was late into the night, and there was not even the rustle of passing people from the hall.
The silence was weighing on him. Over the years, he talked less and less as himself, only as the Liesmith and the Silvertongue. He spoke to manipulate, to persuade, to cheat someone to Asgard’s advantage. He sometimes drank too much and then spoke sharp uncomfortable things, thinly veiled as jests to everyone in the immediate vicinity. Days or weeks after, Odin inevitably was sterner with him, and somehow even more distant than usual, and Loki received multiple lectures on propriety (as if Thor would ever be lectured so). Then he was given a particularly dull assignment, usually where he would be stuck alone in some archive or sent off on a solitary quest. Not that he particularly minded.
He learned to like the silence. But sometimes, like now, it became a crushing weight and it felt impossible to keep his mouth shut, he needed to find people, any kind of people. In his younger days, he cast an illusion to disguise himself and went to the markets, to haggle over some books or parchment for no other reason than to just be around people whose faces did not sour as soon as they saw him. He sat in taverns and if he was lucky, a conversation would begin and he would make up a life for himself, weaving in some of his own self into it. It was better than nothing.
He did not dare such a trick now. ‘Odin’s’ behaviour was already deviating from the centuries-old patterns, he must not start disappearing from the palace too. With so much at stake, his plans must not be disturbed by something so insignificant as feeling lonely. So, Loki stayed where he was supposed to be, acting the part of a grieving old man, burdened by his many years, and reigning over a peaceful empire. He thought that once he was free of the dungeons, at least his solitary confinement would end. How wrong, how wrong once again.
Loki walked over to the bed, wrapping himself in the blanket and huddling in the armchair by the window. He wasn’t going to sleep in the blasted thing anyway. Armchairs were somehow on the safe sleeping location list, and beds weren’t, most days. Maybe because he was hurt lying down a lot more often than sitting up. Or maybe it was because of the armrests, squeezing him and the blanket in and keeping his body tethered to reality while his mind was away. In any case, at least that he could afford – old men had strange sleeping habits, no one would be surprised even if they saw. He felt an old man himself, full of burdens, regret, and pain.