Chapter Text
When vulnerable, Loki excelled at acting certain.
Truth be told, Loki was never completely certain about anything. Whether one dressed it as childish curiosity or adolescent anxiety, he was oft afflicted by an uncomfortable awareness of tenuity. The thin lines between blessed and luckless, the prince and the stranger, the loved and the lost. With the intimacy of a marionette, he knew those lines.
Like any curious child or anxious adolescent, he picked at them. Pulling the strings to his liking. Often, his meddling led to the better outcome. He’d learned to rip the seams between worlds at will and learned to untangle Thor’s problems just as easily. His skill at erasing uncertainty made him valuable.
Not to everyone. Hardly anyone. Thor.
He was valuable to Thor. How foolish his brother was for not realising Loki was a spider spinning webs around him, encasing him in a comfortable cocoon to chew up and spit out. Laughably stupid.
Loki supposed he was equally as foolish for forgetting how badly his strings cut when mishandled.
The two great men of Asgard gleamed silver and gold as Loki diluted into the shadows of the Bifrost Gate. He knew his place. Their quarrel ricocheted across the polished gold of the Bifrost Observatory, quickly careening out of control. All that could be seen when he peered up at their faces was how heavily marred they were with hot blood and grandiose self-importance. Any other day he would have scoffed.
But this was the climax to a stage he'd set. He'd expected commotion. Craved it. He’d imagined Laufey towering over the dignitaries’ table, raising a great fist and demanding retribution for the trespass of the boy nearly crowned king.
Not murder. Never murder.
His fingers twisted over a callous built over years of knife-wielding and a stint in swordsmanship as anxiety dug a cavern into his chest. The loose threads in his plan made him sick - how could he be as foolish as to let blood spill on his simple pantomime?
He’d been smart enough to think of contingencies. Hundreds of them. Even the death of a few Jotuns had been accounted for. Rather embarrassingly, those thoughts began and ended in picture-book-tinged images. In Asgard, every child’s imagined war ended in shattered ice sculptures.
Loki was read stories left behind from Thor’s boyhood every night. The nurse had cooed over how intently he’d looked at the pictures of the Frost Giants, proclaiming him a born warrior to Frigga. Loki cried when his mother took the books away, believing he’d upset her.
Oh, he’d upset her now .
The picture books never included the gasps of the dying and the blood pouring over frigid cliff sides. They never mentioned how the hero caused their comrades’ shattered ribs and gaping wounds. The hero was never the cause of hushed whispers and withering dissent from their subjects for centuries before any of this mess.
What was it all for?
Envy. A boy’s desperate envy.
His eyes had long since dropped from Odin and Thor’s faces. Instead, he tracked how blood sliced through Nidavellir craftsmanship. A murky purple pooled near his feet, sluicing from Fandral’s wounds and the Frost Giants’ torn flesh. Grisly.
The air tinged with iron and ozone as the cacophony raged on.
“You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!” Loki had never seen such frenzy in Odin’s eye.
Odin had always been slow to anger, as any good king should be. Loki had learned the makings of a king through Odin. It was how he knew Thor didn't deserve the throne just yet. Thor, who was fed on a silver spoon, barely wiser than a petulant child banging his toys together. Despite the facts, Odin, the omnipotent Allfather, had been blind enough to not see it. Loki simply wanted to prove it.
All he proved was Odin’s anger was a gift to his bloodline. A bloodline Loki didn’t share.
It wasn’t the resigned shake of his head when the brothers skipped their lessons or stole cakes from the kitchens. It wasn’t the curled lip of distaste when Loki was pushed into the mud by the weakest Einherjar recruit or Thor said something far too vulgar for the dignitaries' ears. It wasn’t even the rage of Thor dragging Loki along to a hunt when he was a deal too young or of Loki turning servants to snails for an experiment.
No. This was earth-shattering rage. It was a beast stoked to life by those too weak to control it. It was something long buried that should have been left to rest and rot. Perhaps it had been. Odin’s cheeks looked cavernous in the light of the observatory and his breath flagged as he shouted. The anger took its toll.
Yet, words poured out from his wisened mouth, pooling on the observatory floor like venom. Barbs for an unruly heir to overcome. Odin’s eye strained in the bright light, as if seeing stars. Yet, he was steadfast, peeling back layers of personal tradition surrounding Odinsleep to tend to Thor. The blood son.
Green really was Loki’s best colour.
It irked him, now. How many times Odin would indulge Thor, protect Thor, excuse Thor. Loki, too, liked his brother. But his brother was too well-liked for those around him to see how awfully he’d rule.
Perhaps because it had been his birthright. Perhaps because he was spun-gold and wrought-silver. Perhaps because Loki was never anything but a relic.
But, despite everything, Thor was not ready to be king.
Loki’s demonstrations of this had started well before the announcement last Yule. They were overlooked, barely pebbles in Thor’s boot. Everything Loki planned was smiled away as the whims of a young, righteous, overzealous boy.
Loki kept pushing. He supposed that, if found out, it would seem he was planning on seizing the throne for himself. A spiteful cuckoo. Even if no one believed it - Loki never wanted something as trifling as the throne.
These schemes were a duty he had as a prince, to prevent a child of a king from destroying the grasp Asgard had on the happenings of the cosmos. These schemes were also the shadowy jealousy that pushed him to render his brother as useless as Loki felt.
It was meant to be perfect.
Odin would realise Thor was unfit; send him on diplomatic excursions, apprentice him with dwarves, have him remove some threats to Asgard. Then, a true coronation could commence. Not the pantomime of the morning.
Not this.
Odin had broken several bylaws and unwritten pacts by setting foot on Jotunheim’s desolate, barren, lifeless soil. The soil that was, through some cruel trick of the Norns, Loki’s home.
Loki, childishly, wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. That his skin only appeared blue in the midnight sky of Jotunheim. That it didn’t put every slight against him which he’d convinced himself he’d imagined in sharp relief. That Loki of Asgard wasn’t a farce.
The thought made him retch and he could taste the battle. Not in a flowery way, no matter how much Thor’s friends would accuse him of swallowing novels. Tangibly.
The ice of Jotunheim’s throne was ancient. Layers upon layers of frost and sleet and snow left undisturbed in a ritual Loki never paid mind to. But now, he could taste how the beats of Volstagg’s axe; the scrapes of Fandral’s staff; the gashes of Sif’s sword and the crashes of Hogun’s mace disturbed the millennia old fractals, sending them tumbling into his lungs. He could feel the shards take root within, exposing him from inside out.
It was nothing like fresh spring water from glades in Asgard. It was nothing like the thrice-distilled water used for the best potions. It was nothing like the snowflakes they’d catch on their tongues as children.
Was this what home tasted like?
The question overpowered the delicate coat of ice on his tongue, replacing it with a spill of acid at the thought of being one the monstrous race. The questions flurried through him, but no silver tongue would stop Thor and Odin.
So he waited.
It gave him a moment, he supposed, to ponder the role he should play. Loki was duplicitous by nature. Gambling social currency for his own sake was as easy as breathing. It wasn’t shameful - it was brokerage of his few assets.
Everyone knew Thor was oddly persuasive. It was his earnestness when he said something, declaring it like a king, which demanded convivial agreement. Loki could, very easily, play into it. Everyone knew Loki was a marionette when it came to Thor.
Odin could believe Loki had simply been dragged into Thor’s indignant rage, had been trying to stop him all the while, and had told the Einherjar guard as a final prayer.
After all, Thor still believed the idea was his .
Belief. What a flimsy thing.
Loki had once believed himself a prince, brother, son.
All it had taken was a misadventure to realise the tenuity of belief.
Some part of him wondered if he could will himself to forget it happened. His silver tongue had plenty of experience in weaving stories and explanations indiscernible from truths and facts. Surely, his next challenge was to convince himself he was still Odinson?
The true Odinson had thundered yet more blows and Loki’s hair began to react to the static. Even Sleipnir, Loki’s pride and joy, had begun to fuss outside the gates of the Observatory. Loki wondered if he should step out, let the blood relations obliterate each other and ride back home on the stallion he never should have given up.
The heartbeat of the Bifrost sounded, as Odin berated Thor further.
“You are unworthy!” Odin thundered, boiling anger colouring his voice in a way that neither of his children imagined before. “Unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed.”
Loki knew where best to pierce and twist the knife when it came to verbal battles. It seemed Odin had a similar streak. Thor’s pride was his worthiness. A worthy king, a worthy warrior, a worthy son.
But it wasn’t what made him tick. Loki had said more than enough about Thor’s worthiness for it to be inconsequential.
No - loved ones.
Thor had been fed, as any good king should, stories of sacrifice. He’d been horrified every time a father pushed his son out of a burning home. He’d been sick every time a shield sister took a blow meant for the protagonist. He’d wailed every time a frail sibling died in a tower.
The notion of loss frightened him. The one who never lost anything. He’d teetered on the edge, of course. In quests gone wrong, in sickness the healers’ chambers had little cure for, in moments where bridges were words away from burning. And, yet, loss of loved ones was what could bring the mighty Thor to his knees.
Loki never had the heart to go that far.
Thor and Odin stood silent for a moment, as if realising the ravine between them for the first time. Loki thought, for a moment, they would stop.
Despite living centuries, Asgardians were remarkably resistant to change. They were seemingly cyclical beings. The status quo returned despite everything. Surely, in this case it would be the same.
Odin would cough gauchely and bring them to Fandral’s bedside. At mealtime, he’d set meat on their plates with the care of a father and leave it at that. Thor would brusquely apologise through mouthfuls of veal as Loki could roll his eyes over the fatty monstrosity that Frigga would discreetly put onto her own plate. All would be forgiven, all would be forgotten by the golden-haired ones, leaving Loki with the crippling knowledge of his true kin.
In his reverie, he supposed it wouldn’t be so bad to be the only one burdened.
As if hearing his thoughts, Odin’s heavy eye bored into Loki as he turned in a blinding strike of gold. The uncertainty reared its ugly head as Loki tried to rationalise this sudden change. Had Odin figured out it was a trick? Was Loki simply more worthy of disparagement than his brother? Had Heimdall seen what the touch of Jotun had done to Loki’s skin?
There was a moment of hesitation, a second where Odin’s gaze slid towards Thor once more, but he strode towards Loki with resolve.
“I hereby take your power!” Like pulling fingernails, his sedir drained. He sank to his knees with no rapture, relief swelling his heart at the barest thrum left in his veins.
“The name of my father!” His left rerebrace, gilded with the Odinson crest, crumbled, his father’s magic sliding down, searing hot, where his vambrace would’ve been if not for it crumbling into icy shards a mere hour before.
His eyes began to ache with how frantically they fluttered between his father and brother’s faces. Thor looked like a berserker on the battlefield, rage threatening to spill from his fists as Loki’s mouth filled with static.
The thunderstorm within and without Thor’s eyes vanished when he raised his fist, realising who he was acting against. The Allfather. Odin Borson. Thor’s father.
A wave of defeat crept down on Loki, shattering his regal posture to that of a wailing child, as he realised what this must be.
Odinson was finally revealed to be Laufeyson.
“And his father before!” The right vambrace crumpled, infinitely small shards disappearing before they hit the gilded flooring, leaving only his own face staring at him, more haggard than he thought.
He had no breath to scream, to demand answers, to ask why .
“I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!”
He fell.
Through stars, galaxies, time itself, he fell. A universe elapsed, maybe two.
Despite the stars dripping from celestial branches, all he could see were stormy blue eyes. He thought he could hear echoes of Thor’s protests, his fingers could fleetingly feel the silk of his mother’s gowns, he couldn’t tell if the moisture on his face was his own tears or, desperately, Odin’s.
Blood rushed in his ears as his breath caught in his throat, arms flailing for purchase on nothing. Tears flew into endless cosmos, lasting milliseconds as liquid stars before dissipating in the searing cold of space.
His mind was convinced he was speeding up. Intellectually, he knew that was impossible. It was an illusion of the mind, a way to not go mad at the vast cosmos. But he still entertained the notion of being frozen. Could frost giants freeze?
He couldn’t ponder any such questions, his thoughts were faint and circular. If not for the void crushing his limbs, he would be tearing at his hair, cursing himself for every time he wished for time to stop so he could work on a potion or some sort of mischief.
Shapes of shadows fluttered before and behind his eyelids, as if waiting for him to succumb. Time was a syrupy agony.
The caught breath was pushed out with force. The blood rush ended, as his ears rang with the ache of the uneasy landing.
He gathered everything within him to stand, the stars above dizzying and the ground below soft.
Another knock on the ribs, harder, this time.
There was no strength left to gather.
-
Jane's heels filled with sand. The soft grains made every step a struggle as her mind raced to catch up with her feet.
Her heart crawled into her throat.
The headlights barely permeated the abyss of the desert night but she couldn’t see any blood. That was good, right? Her medical knowledge ended at mindless reruns of medical dramas as she wrote her theses. She bit her cheek, did any of them say no blood was worse? Her breath hitched, were they going to be paralysed? Her legs were a stiff breeze away from bucking, had she killed someone?
Darcy’s voice startled her, whipping through arid desert air.
“Dude, did we kill him?” Darcy asked, voice wavering. “I didn’t drop out of medical school for this, man. Damn those credits, we’re going to jail!”
“Darcy, please .” Jane couldn’t entertain the possibility the person was dead. She couldn’t.
“Get the first aid kit.” Jane said, a small recess of her mind jealous of Darcy’s flats. Her heels were made to walk on the solid oak of university flooring, not the sand of Chihuahuan desert.
Grains of sand dug at her knees as she knelt beside the unmoving form. Pushing aside dark hair, she fumbled her hand around his pulse point. Nothing. She reasoned with herself that she’d never learned how to check a pulse. That had to be it.
He couldn’t be dead.
“Do you know CPR?” Jane called warily. She remembered staring at the dummy brought into her elementary school and wailing enough to be excused.
“I dropped out!” Darcy’s voice finally made it through the cacophony of Jane’s mind.
The man didn’t move.
Selvig hung back, arms slung at his sides as if he couldn’t quite remember he had them. He started tugging things out of the back of the van and pushing them into the front, keeping his eyes away from the body.
A lizard skittered across the sand, darting its tongue out to taste the strange blend of crippling fear and the Einstein-Rosen bridge which would make Jane’s career. Jane wasn’t even sure why she saw it despite the bloodless body in front of her. It took off into the sand before she could feel guilty.
Jane could see the headlines now. ‘Female scientist kills innocent in science experiment gone wrong’. Her name would be dragged through mud, especially after that incident with that shithead director last year. Her breath quickened, a tightness building in her chest as she realised what was at stake. All those years she’d worked to be able to get into the meetings, lectures, seminars; all the young people who looked up to her; all her plans for a happy future. Gone.
She reeled her thoughts back. This wasn’t about her.
She brought out her StarkPhone, cursing lamely when it slipped from her trembling hands.
Why had the guy been in the desert all alone, with no gear? Sure, it wasn’t peak summer yet but it still wasn’t safe. Was he a runaway? Jane had heard stories of kids shipped off to horrible places in the middle of nowhere.
Just as she finished typing in the emergency number, the man struggled himself up.
Her hand stilled as he looked up, likely concussed, at the sky.
Instinctively, Jane looked up too. She saw the constellations she’d spent late nights studying. Growing up in the city, she only saw them once she started conducting research. Her eyes traced over the same stars her ancestors must have looked at centuries ago, feeling strangely calm.
She pulled her gaze from the dizzying cosmos, turning to see abject horror.
His eyes, startlingly green despite the dimness of night and a concussion, flicked over the stars with increasing distress.
Jane shuffled back, hoping that giving him some space would help. Darcy was hauling their overstuffed first aid kit across the sand but the man paid no mind.
His voice was accented, hoarse, terrified. “Heimdall! Please, open the Bifrost! Heimdall!”
Jane wished for once that Darcy had finished medical school instead of following her physics calling, because this was clearly a medical emergency. His posture was flagging as he reached his arms upwards as if to meet an old friend, calling out to some greater being.
His eyes seemed to filter the cosmos into a pinprick in their delirious travel across the sky. Jane took the moment to bring her phone to her lips as the signal sluggishly connected her to the nearest hospital.
After a few moments more of screaming at the sky the man turned towards her, “What realm is this? Alfheim? Vanheim?”
Jane blanched. Realm? Her mind whipped through possibilities as her phone reminded her of her low credit.
“New Mexico. We’re just outside of Puente Antiguo.” It was the closest she could come to answering the question.
She took her phone into her hand again, wondering if she should dial again. Out of her peripherals, she noticed the guy take a step towards her, eyes trained on her phone. She was about to ask if he had someone to call when she noticed Darcy holding the taser Jane had gotten her for self defence-
“Darcy, no!”
The man fell again, sending dust into Jane’s open mouth.
She needed to dial again.