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Loki sleeps –when the situation and his own inner turmoil allow him- the sleep of young children or those recovering from a long illness: rosy-cheeked, deep, and as refreshing for him as it is for those who watch him.
You watch him now.
The blue light of the Tesseract throws shadows of ice and moonlight on your lover’s skin and, more than once, you fancy you can almost see the Jotun markings shimmering weakly under pale Aesir skin; Loki is lying on his stomach, blankets pooled low over his hips, uncaring of the cold wind that blows through the ruined halls of what once was the ancestral keep of Clan Bethmoora.
It isn't the cold that won’t let you sleep.
It isn't the temptation of Loki’s smooth skin, cool and white as the marble walls around you.
It isn't the soft hum of the magic pouring from the Tesseract, spreading through Alfheimr like a raging flood, like a cleansing fire, hopefully readying the land for its rebirth.
It isn't the sounds coming from the improvised shantytown that has grown around the walls of the keep. Veteran trolls, goblins seeking their fortune, disaffected Jotuns, idealistic young elves (and more than a few elders who remember the realm as it had been), demons of shady pasts and even shadier intentions, a surprising number of Asgardians dissatisfied with their king, Vanir refugees still fleeing the repercussions of the Aesir-Vanir war, human witches and mutants sick of their world’s path to destruction… the lost and rejected of the Nine Realms have been trickling in steadily since the news spread that the Two Fallen Princes would bring back Alfheimr to its former glory or bring down Yggdrasil in the attempt.
It isn't even the memory of that night, not so long ago, when you returned from settling a dispute between a tribe of trolls and a goblin merchant (like the Elven kings of legend, Loki had teased before sending you off with a kiss) only to find blood spattered over the pulsating Tesseract and your lover missing. You had one moment of weakness –one second of heart-stopping fear, one second of heart-breaking grief- before you grabbed the Tesseract, wrapped you anger around yourself like armour, and went to claim back what had been under your protection. You had been a hunter of note even in your youth, and so many years on the run have only sharpened your skills, but you had never pursued a quarry like you did then, running day and night with your hand wrapped around the hilt of your lance and a leaden weight growing heavier in your chest with every passing minute, until you feared that you and Nuala would both die from it if you didn't find your prey soon; in the end, The Other, malevolent puppet of a fallen master, had been no match for you, and you were granted the gift of his death and the reward of kissing the blood from Loki's lips and the tears from his bruised eyelids.
But none of this is keeping you awake now. You are used to the cold, the magic, the noise, and the fear of closing your eyes to sleep not knowing whether you will open them only to meet your death. You are used to the pull of the endless expanse of Loki’s skin, to the compulsion to bring a smile to those wicked lips and a glimmer of something dangerous and not quite sane to those green eyes. You are used to the memories of your mistakes haunting your waking and sleeping hours. They wouldn't keep you from your rest.
The ghosts, though… the ghosts won’t let you sleep.
They run down the hallways, twin children of white-gold hair and flawless skin; they sweep around corners ahead of you, with long skirts trailing behind them, hiding a face that you can only remember in dreams; they sit on what was once the throne room, perpetually weary and perpetually disappointed; they fill the now empty keep with the noise and the laughter of what was once a flourishing realm and is now nothing but a handful of lost souls gathered around a flickering candle of hope.
Their unsubstantial presence makes you want to take to the crumbling corridors of the keep like a maddened beast and roar out your pain.
Maybe once Alfheimr is whole again… maybe once Midgard is destroyed… maybe once Nuala sits again on the throne besides yours… maybe once Loki stops waking up from nightmares he doesn't want to speak about… maybe you'll sleep then, and no ghosts will surround you.
But those are lies, because Loki sleeps now by your side, while the Tesseract works its magic on your kingdom and the quiet thrum of Nuala’s heartbeat whispers in a corner of your chest. All is as well as it could be, so why the unrest? Why the twinges of pain under your old scars and the skittering of old fears at the back of your mind? Why the memories unearthed and invading the keep like revenants?
The sheets feel like a leaden weight, but when you start to sit up, a cold hand stops you.
“Don't leave.”
Loki's eyes are closed and you would swear he was still asleep if it weren't for those quiet words and his fingers around your wrist.
“Every night, you leave.” Loki opens his eyes and you lie back down without protest and stare at the ceiling. “You have not slept once since we settled here.”
It's true, but you don't want to tell him that watching him sleep is enough to sustain you; it's bad enough that he's caught you at it, admitting the truth would feel too much like defeat, like weakness, like putting the weight of your problems on Loki's shoulders.
He watches you. You keep quiet. He will not ask, because admitting he doesn't know something is also a sort of defeat. You will not tell him, because you have already revealed too many weaknesses to his sharp mind. Silence will settle between you like dust, and in the morning you will both have enough in your plates to pretend this quiet, nocturnal moment never happened.
“Tell me the truth and let me help,” Loki says when enough time has passed that you're beginning to hope he's fallen asleep again.
You smile in spite of yourself. He's clever, your prince, and ruthless; he'd not hesitate to stab you through the heart if he thought he'd be helping you with it, and he will never stop surprising you, even if you both live long enough to see the end of the world.
“You can't help me,” you say, as gently as you can, and catch the fingers that are only now letting go of your wrist.
“I thought you couldn't help me,” Loki says, and you can hear the accusation in his voice. “I thought it would kill us both. And still I did it.”
You could choose to be offended at his lack of faith in your abilities, but instead you're touched to know he chose to follow you into what he thought would be your doom. So reckless, he is, when it comes to his own skin; so reckless and yet, when it comes to Alfheimr (when it comes to you), there are not enough safety measures and countermeasures, plans and back-up plans, protective spells and warding talismans, to satisfy him.
You've had arguments about this, like you've had about everything else, but more bitter. You've accused him of trying to kill himself, of siding with the Midgardians, of using his precautions as a façade to delay your planned attack on that wretched realm and protect Stark; jealousy turned your voice into a deadly monotone you didn't recognise as your own. He replied with suspicions of his own, accusing you of using him as a substitute for Nuala while you lure her to your side, of reaching a deal with Thor that will see Loki returned to Asgard when his usefulness to your cause has run out, of holding his Jotun form in contempt. You have scars from holding onto his shoulders that night, blue skin burning into your hands until his rage ran out and he sank back into your embrace, still trembling.
But now you feel worn and weary and old, and you don't want to argue. You want to smooth that little crease between Loki's eyebrows, straighten the worried tilt to his mouth, and rest with his hands carding through your hair.
“I remember,” you say at last; you can tell from the way his fingers twitch that Loki wasn't expecting you to answer. “I remember what was, and seeing what is now is intolerable.”
Loki is silent in the wake of your confession. You are relieved that he understands that he can't help you with the weight of your memories, and yet... and yet there is a small, naïve part of you that is also disappointed at his failure to come up with one of his mad, perfect plans to fix your past like you are fixing your realm.
“I dream of the fall,” he says after a moment, his eyes fixed on the ceiling; you turn to look at him, a little taken aback by his sudden sincerity. “And of the... of the landing. Of The Other, and Thanos. And, sometimes...” He smiles, bitterly, at the ceiling. “Sometimes, I dream of Asgard. Those dreams are the worst.”
You don't know what to say, even though you suspect your silence now disappoints Loki like his silence disappointed you just a few moments before. There are things that cannot be fixed, scars that no amount of magic will smooth away, memories that will sting, no matter how much time has passed.
“But when you're here, I don't dream.”
You roll into him and kiss the words from his lips, afraid that someone else might hear them, wanting them all for yourself. Loki is braver than you are, or else you have breached his defences at some point (… that day, in your house in Svartálfaheimr, tell me the truth and let me help, and his face crumpling as if he'd been mortally wounded, so open, so wanting...) and now his truths are yours for the taking.
“When you're here, I don't need sleep,” you whisper into his kiss-swollen lips, a secret for a secret, a weakness for a weakness, a truth for a truth.
The worried tilt to his mouth has now turned soft, confused, disbelieving, and you kiss him again because Loki, so willing to believe in his own monstrosity, has never met a compliment he cannot disprove or twist into criticism. He stares at you when the kiss ends, tasting the air for lies though you know he will find none, and then gives you a tentative smile; you smile back somewhat helplessly, and for a moment you forget about ghosts, memories and other vagaries of your tired mind.
“Someday,” Loki whispers between kisses, “you won’t have space for those memories… you won’t remember what was, only the glory that will be…”
You make a low sound that can pass as agreement, and distract him with a deeper, hungrier kiss; you’re not sure that you want to let go of the ghosts of the past, painful as they might be, but you feel Loki’s offer is more of a wish for himself than a promise to you.
“Let’s not sleep, then,” Loki says, a good while later, stretching shamelessly on the rumpled sheets. “Let us never sleep… we have so much to do! You think you can intercept a messenger…?” He grins when you merely raise an eyebrow in reply. “Yes, of course you can. I need to know what Thor is planning with your sister, it can’t be good that those two are finding common ground… and there's this volume from Asgard's library that I would like to get my hands on...”
You think Thor would be a better match for Nuala than the blue stranger she has attached herself to -not just because he'd be able to keep her according to her position, but also because their worldviews seem to match-, but you are careful not to let Loki know you are even considering it. Family is a sore subject for both of you and it won't do to shatter this fragile peace you have achieved.
This peace made of feverish activity and long waits, of problems and solutions, of secrets and silences; this peace attained in a dying realm, based in an unstable artefact and plans normal people would deem too risky even without knowledge of your prior failures; this peace of having Loki at your side, even though you can tell his instinct is to flee and fight alone; this peace of there being someone who will notice your sleeplessness even if he can't do anything to soothe it.
Dawn is lighting up the sky; Loki makes a face when the roar of a group of trolls makes the few panes of glass in the windows shake, then gets up and starts poking at the Tesseract, wrapped in a sheet; you leave the bed too, calculating how much time you can spare for Thor's messenger before you have to go and meet the King of Goblins in Svartálfaheimr in order to negotiate a few concessions that will hopefully make other realms sit up and take (more) notice of your position.
This is not what you dreamt of when you walked away from your father all those centuries ago, not what you hoped for in all those years of waiting and planning in the dark, and not what you feared would happen after your defeat, but of all the designs the Norns might have woven your life into, none would fit you better.
Much, much later, once the Nine Realms are at your feet, you might return to this place and remember not the ghosts of your youth, but these stolen moments and the curve of Loki's back as lit by the Tesseract and the glimmer of dawn as reflected in his eyes when he turns to look at you.
Some memories are worthier of being eternal than others.