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The doors of Helheim’s audience hall slammed hard enough that the torches guttered. The dead didn’t flinch, Hel's servants Ganglati and Ganglot unmoving; nothing surprised them anymore. But the living half of the queen’s face was flushed with anger, and the dead half looked… tired. Not in a way that was frightening, just exhausted in a way that went down to the bones of the world.
Hel walked quickly, each step echoing like a heartbeat through stone. The two servants depated if they should comfort her, offer her anything.. once the young lady reached the dais, stopped, and then simply went very still. No, Ganglati told himself internally, his wife already finishing his thought with the hushed whispers from her dried mouth, ''He.. is already here to take care of it.''
For a moment Hel didn’t look like a ruler, she looked like someone young who had been strong for too long.
Loki was already there, not sitting on the throne or sprawled in a dramatic pose, but leaning against one of the cold carved pillars nearby the couple that was serving his daugther, like he had been waiting for exactly this to happen.
He didn’t crack a joke, once he revealed himself. That in itself said everything.
“Another hero?” he asked softly, raising a sharp eyebrow.
Hel swallowed, clearly holding herself from falling apart on the spot. “Yes..”
She tried to sound bored, regal, aloof, the underworld queen who had heard every boast mortals could invent.
Instead her voice came out small, just the way she felt which made it worse.
“He burst in,” she said, the words tumbling faster once they began, “like they always do. Swinging his sword, shouting about destiny, demanding I return his friend, his brother, his horse, I don’t even know — because apparently I am an obstacle, a test, a wall to punch through. He said I was—” she stopped, jaw tightening. “…he said I was a child playing queen.”
The torches hissed as if Hel was able to control them with her emotions.
There were a thousand cutting things Loki could have said about the hero, and he thought of all of them in an instant. He thought of curses and illusions and turning the man’s boots into fish. What actually made it out of his mouth was quiet..
“And?”
“And then he called me ‘kiddo,’” she whispered, narrow shoulders folded inward, like the word itself had weight. It wasn’t the worst insult she had heard in her life time.
She had been called many things; corpse-girl, half-thing, half-ling, monster, mistake, curse, world ender. Those had glanced off her like arrows hitting stone. But kiddo had slid past the armor and dug in.
Loki crossed the distance between them without any theatrics. His footsteps, simple and steady, he didn’t ask permission; he just opened his arms the way he had when she was much smaller, when her throne had been too big and the world had been bigger still.
She walked into the embrace before she could decide not to. Hel pressed her forehead against his shoulder and breathed in that familiar scent of her parent, that felt like home even in a realm made of halls of the dead. Her fingers clutched at the fabric of his tunic tightly, as if she was gonna be ripped away from him again, desperate to not let go.
“I work,” she said, the words shaking. “I judge. I organize. I hold this entire realm together so the living world can pretend it is not terrified of what I am in charge of. I do everything right and I am still—”
“A child to them,” Loki finished gently, pressing a soft kiss to her head.
Her living green eye filled with tears; the dead one remained eerily still. The contrast hurt to look at and hurt worse to feel.
“I don’t want to be softer about it,” she said. “I don’t want to rise above it or learn or— or any of that wise ruler nonsense. I just want him to trip over absolutely nothing and break his pride on the floor.”
That was when Loki smiled, not with a sharp grin he always wore.. it was something warmer, lopsided and fond.
“My child,” he whispered, pressing his cheek against her hair, “that isn’t immaturity, that is just excellent taste.”
A little laugh punched out of her before she could stop it. It echoed through Helheim, and the dead listened like it was music. Her anger loosened its grip, just a fraction, enough for air to come back into her lungs.
“I’m tired,” she admitted at last.
“I know,” Loki said. “It’s heavy, what you carry.”
He didn’t tell her she shouldn’t feel that way. He didn’t tell her she was strong enough to handle it. He just held her tighter, like strength could be borrowed for a while.
Hel pulled back slightly, wiped her eye with the edge of her sleeve, and sniffed with the dignity of someone who would definitely send you to the depths of ginnungagap if you mentioned it again.
“Thank you,” she said, voice steadier. “For… being here.”
Loki shrugged lightly. “It’s in the job description.”
“What job?”
He tapped her forehead, then his own heart. “Of being your father.”
She rolled her eye. “That was sentimental.”
“I’m recovering from it already,” he said gravely. “Give me a minute and I’ll ruin the mood completely.”
“Please don’t.”
He did not.