Chapter Text
The air hissing through the looming, featureless smooths of stone is cold, hitting skin she hadn’t known was exposed with a burning vengeance. Her lungs feel sharp, as if the air is cutting rivets into her with every shuddering breath she takes. The air in Hel is not meant to provide breath, and it makes its irritation with her neediness clear.
The sky above her closes, and the light is gone. She is left alone in a realm with no sun, and not even a tent to spare her from the brunt of the wind.
She can’t leave. Her father wasn’t one to fall back on a promise, and he’d promised as much, forever damned to the threat of frostbite, and isolation. Unfit for battle, much less to be his heir.
…
Somehow the words she’s invented--the threat of imperfection in her fathers eyes burns worse than the wind.
Hela has chased the feeling of her own rage for centuries. Chased the rage, and discontent feelings within herself on her father’s word, so that she could put a blade through a man’s chest without guilt. So she could face perfection, and her lack of it. It was her drive, and her power. The only thing that drove her more than her father’s stern hand. Now that she sits in Hel, now that she’s been banished to a world of unworthy souls, it abandons her, rage swept away with the light in the sky.
Hela is alone with herself. Without her rage, and her drive, and nothing but her memories in her mind, and it is a hatred that fills her. She’s sick with it, this irrational self-loathing. Hela screams as if the souls can hear her, not quite angry, but unwilling to name it as anything else. A weight settles into her shoulder, what-ifs, and doubts wriggling into her mind, filling her insides with lead. There was no room for doubts under Odin’s hand.
Fenris won’t know what happened. He’ll grieve.
Hela has never once been given a punishment she didn’t deserve. Never forced to endure anything that didn’t serve to better her. To make her a better soldier, a better daughter. She had known better than to even dream of usurping him. She was no fool--much like anyone with good sense, she’d grown to fear her father the repercussions of her mistakes. But she’d done it anyway. Disobeyed the Alfather’s word for the discord within herself, and look what it got her?
She’d faced every punishment she’d ever earned, no matter how humiliating--or painful, but this one was not one she had ever grown accustomed to. Not a strictness of Odin’s she had grown to know.
Your legacy of blood is over, your name worthless on the tongues of my people.
There is no feeling left to chase. A numbness settles inside of her, much like her hands.
This is not a punishment, but abandonment. Her abandonment is her father’s last jump to the benign-ruler she knows he is not. He claims to be moving onto an era, and if something sharp, and hungry within her will not allow her to, he will remove her from the narrative.
This is disownment, his attempt to pin the blame in his mind on something he can get rid of. To forget them--their legacy, and the monster he raised.
When a dog moves beyond your control you get rid of it. She’s not a dog, but his child, isn’t she?
The fact that she isn’t sure makes her stomach churn.
There is no feeling for her to chase, no war to fight, and no hand to guide her, and Hela does not feel free, like she had in her youth. This was no evening in the back garden, forgotten by whoever would claim she needed training, but a blanket of emotional weight she’d never matured enough to process. She is alone. Not only in body, but in spirit, and guidance for the first time in her life, and there is no joy to it. She’s been disowned. Hela is no longer the heir to Asgard, no longer the Alfather's executioner. If she is not his warrior, his greatest fighter, then there is nothing for her to be. Hela has owed her father vengeance, and blood since she was conceived, and now she has been forbidden from repaying her debt. Her life holds no use to anyone here, especially not her. How could it? Centuries of training against her own will--overcoming her instinct of self preservation, of loyalty , thrown away in a breath.
She is a beast with no burden, lost to the unknown, and the feeling creeping in on her is something Hela had been taught not to act on. Fear swallows her, chokes her down. She is off her lead, not just because she had chewed through it, but because her father had thrown the handle to the ground.
A small flicker of relief ignites within her stomach, despite the cold bite of fear. She's been cut loose. Hela Odinsdottir is Odin's daughter no more, and despite herself--despite the numb feeling, she finds herself grinning, perhaps in disbelief. If it weren't for the iced wind she wouldn't believe this. That the father she knew could throw her away so easily--nor that she was relieved of all things.
But there she was.
…
Hela is not Odin's daughter anymore, and when the rage dissipates, and all she seems to have left is the numbness of herself, and her surroundings, she finds that that fact fills her with both relief, and insurmountable dread.
…
Hela has never been without someone to guide her--never been without the direction of someone else as to who she is. And when there is no one to guide her, that discord is all she is. As she sits there, and the dread and anxiety settle in beside the small flicker of relief, she begins to fume. It starts slow at first, but Hela's soul catches ablaze like a kerosene soaked torch, and she's filled with a different kind of hateful bitterness. Not quite the same thing she had chased--the discord within herself remains, thoughts warring against each other. Her mind spins in circles over blame, both for herself, and for her father. The hate building inside of her however, is strong, and with no hand to guide her, she is left to determine where it wants her to follow herself.
She wants him dead .
She’s trapped here certainly--should she try and run for it--to find the tiny, dark entrances to Asgard, and claw her way back to put his head on a pike, she’ll likely face an army--if she can even set foot onto her stomping grounds at all. She’s had the misfortune of being subjugated once or twice, by her father’s power, and she recognizes the feeling. He won’t let her leave Hel if he can help it. He was strong.
Angry, and brutal, yes--but he was no young man, and Hela was. Barely brushing to 1045, and growing stronger everyday--at least she had been.
Hela is every bit the monster Odin had claimed her to be. The brute that slaughtered hundreds for slights Odin had perceived against himself. Nothing but a dog, frothing at the mouth against a lead that had been dropped.
Hela is Odin’s daughter no more, but a monster of his making. His downfall personified into the hatred burning her soul. She will claw her way out of Hel, however she has to, bloody and broken if she must. Hela has what her father never will have again--and that is time , time to fester, and rot, and find a guiding hand in her hatred, shaping her discord into determination.
Hela will wear him down the same way they’d worn down Jotunheim, the same way they’d destroyed the mountains of men who stood in their way. She knows how far she can sprint before she has to run, how long she can run before she has to walk, or crawl, and exactly how long she can move until she’s clawing her way across an unforgiving ground. A violent heart, blended with the spirit of a relentless fighter.
Hela is she who never rests, fearsome executioner, and she intends to uphold that legacy, even if her father will not.
She wants his head on a pike. And damn it all, she’ll have it.
The waves crash against the cliff, as if as angry as he is. As if distraught.
“ Brother .”
Lightning buzzes around his fingers, anger festering under Thor's skin.
Odin is dead. Their father-- his father is dead. Blown away in the wind like nothing but pollen, with words of pure irrationality as his last words.
Hela, Goddess of death.
Thor would know if he had another sibling. He would. Wouldn't he? His father had never struck him as deluded--as someone old age would claim mentally--but that hadn't made sense . He'd stopped Surtur. There was no giant wolf to swallow the moon. Insanity didn't run in their family--Loki excluded.
Hela, Goddess of death.
Maybe he'd meant something else.
Loki was as often his sister as he was Thor's brother. Maybe Odin had been confused--too wrapped up in holding onto the last bits of his life force to truly make sense of the situation--to explain himself clearly.
Not that that makes more sense.
Loki glances at him, eyebrows down, eyes damp--as if he hadn't declared Odin anything but his father a hundred times over. As if he hadn't been the one to sever him from Asgard--to leave him on a street corner to die like little more than a burden .
He just got Loki back, and he's already going to kill him.
“This was your doing.” Loki's glance turns sour, as if he had any right to be offended by Thor's words after what he'd done. After everything he'd done.
“You know well , that this was never my intention.” Thor is grieving, he is angry, and he knows he has very little control. Still, Loki has somehow managed to be connected to both of their parents' deaths.
When Thor takes a step towards him, Mjølnir in one hand, he has every intention to throttle him.
Loki stumbles smartly backwards, as if putting a few more feet between them could somehow deflate the surmounted rage burrowing into Thor. As if it's going to save him from the ass kicking Thor is certainly going to deliver.
Thor makes it a good two feet before Loki stops, head swinging to the left of them before, unsurely taking a drifting step towards Thor.
Of all the many things his brother is, he's always been leagues above him when it comes to perceiving much more…magical things. Still, Thor is not far behind him this time.
The hair on the back of Thor's neck stands on end as Mjølnir hums in his hand, as if in anticipation. The wind picks up, brushing Loki's curls back off his forehead as he dares another glance at Thor.
The wind smells like rot.
Hela, Goddess of death.
Begrudgingly, throttling his younger brother will have to be pushed back.
The air seems to scream, tearing in two as something malignant and black tears itself into existence, wind whipping.
It took everything I had to keep her trapped.
There is a swell of cold as Loki's “disguise” is dropped, air singed as Thor is struck by lightning. Mjølnir hums. The likely portal screams as Thor tries to imagine what kind of beast would need all of his fathers power to hold them. What kind of monster his family had been hiding.
Could he even fight death herself? Father certainly hadn't thought so.
The mass of darkness pulses, and expands as if it has a heart, stopping as someone half-falls through it. She catches herself, unsteadily holding her hands out beside her before catching her own footing. Sharp breaths echo between the three of them--somehow outshining the quickly diminishing blackness behind her as her hands return to her sides. The wind stops. Thor is sure he still smells rot.
The supposed Goddess meets their eyes--one at a time, panting as if overexerted. By the time she’s stopped, Thor’s gotten a good-enough glance at her. Long, greasy matted black hair covers a large portion of her face. Even from a considerable distance, the dark circles under her eyes are deep enough to be seen. Mjølnir buzzes with excess energy in Thor’s hands as she takes a less than elegant step forward. He tries not to dig his nails into the handle.
“So, he’s gone.” The woman clicks her tongue, glancing at Loki, for once. “I would have liked to see that.” Thor feels Loki’s eyes jump to him without so much as sparing his younger brother a glance. It appears he’ll be hiding behind him, then. Business as usual.
Thor tries his best to be witty--to come up with something nearly as off-putting as ‘I wish I saw your father die’, and utterly fails. Right. He’d leave the silver-tongue to Loki.
He settles for assumptions instead.
“You must be Hela.” The woman before them raises her eyebrows, making no attempts to confirm or deny. If being a dramatic brat is Loki’s best skill, being off-putting must be hers. “I’m Thor--Thor Odinson.” Hela, surprisingly, seems minutely interested--eyebrows raising as she takes the two of them in.
“ Really ? You don’t look like him.” Neither does she. Thor refrains from saying as much--but the fact still stands. Beyond the fact that her eyes hold a sharpness he’d seen in his father’s--her features are her own. Mjølnir buzzes. The silence sits between the three of them as Thor’s jaw moves of it’s own accord--as if even subconsciously he wants to bite back at her. Loki is wise enough to grab onto his bicep, chest to shoulder--like reminding Thor that he’s his shield right now will prevent the weight of his emotions from loosening his tongue. Thor’s not certain that plan is working at all, actually.
“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.” The silence between them hardly lasts a moment--and that moment is all Thor needs to let his mind wander to the hard-way. Mjølnir buzzing against his palm brings little clarity to his mind--thoughts racing to see if they can out run his father’s so-called end. If there is a way to defeat a goddess of Death. Thor has never been the most…thought out when it came to battle--always been one to swing first, and worry about it later. Now, however, in the silence lingering between the three of them, Thor feels absolutely out of his depth. He’s not sure what swinging first will get him, and a part of him doesn’t want to find out.
Hela’s eyebrows raise, face turning some sort of pinched.
She looks more like one of the dead than a goddess of any kind--but Thor has unfortunately been taught that looks--sometimes, can be misleading, (how Loki had failed to teach him that far before he’d met the Avengers, he had no clue). His father had feared her coming. Had told them she would bring Ragnarok with her, and Thor wouldn’t delude himself into believing their father senile--whether that be true or not. His so-called elder sister rolls her shoulders back, sparing Thor a glance before refocusing on their(?) younger brother.
“Perhaps we could.”