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for: beworthy

[ Loki, once called the Sky-walker. He sleeps with his mind half open, catching the distant after-images of the past. Here in the golden halls of Odin One-eye, there are rooms filled with tapestry after tapestry woven with the strands of time itself; where Queen Frigga has pricked her fingers and shed blood and tears alike for the remnants of the past and the shreds of the future that gift themselves to her.

Here, in these halls shaped by those unaccustomed to obeying the laws of time, Loki sleeps, and Loki remembers.

When the Other had stroked his fingertips through Loki's mind, the pain hadn't immediately followed. Colors faded first: the crimson of Thor's cloak, given to him after he'd been newly blooded; it sickened, turned gray. Sounds followed: his mother's voice once sweetened in song, now distorted by the blood rushing through Loki's mind. In the end, only the blood remained untouched: the secrets of the universe, splayed before him by Thanos's devotion to Death, and all Loki could bear to understand was the sharp, rich taste of his own blood in his mouth.

Thanos died without undue fanfare, as did the Other. Loki had cauterized the wounds upon his mind with forceful misrepresentation of what he had been shown. It should have ended with that.

But Loki chose a path that was paved for him long before he knew of his monstrous origins, and the Norns and their ilk do not easily offer prophecy without meaning. Each new act of violence spurred on the next, and the next, until Loki ceased to be Loki and became instead the embodiment of chaos alone.

Still, Death's secrets tormented him. Violence became mundane. Weariness knotted itself about his ankles, and his plotting grew more and more erratic. He had wandered the Nine Realms, searching for answers for questions he did not know how to pose. An eternity later, he carefully carved out his Jötunn heart, hid it under one of the great stones surrounding Mimir's Well, and traveled to the highest peaks of Jotunheim where the Völva Fjorleif made her dwelling. Fjorleif the Devourer, Fjorleif the Kinslayer, who feasted on the hearts of Frost Giants, and grew stronger and wiser for it. She whom even the Allfather feared, for her store of knowledge was outweighed only by her cruelty.

Loki had gone to her in the guise of an Æsir child, each step further away from his still-beating heart an unendurable agony. She had welcomed him, accepted his tribute — a chain forged in the heart of the star Guðmundr, cousin to Mjölnir and brother to Gungnir — and offered him the sight of her smile of shattered teeth.

At her table, settled upon a silver plate, rested Loki's heart.

You would ask me to cure you of the curse of Thanos's knowledge, she had whispered to him, as he clasped a hand over his own chest. And yet, there would be none whose life would be lessened by your deliverance, Liesmith. Why should I offer you my assistance?

None but one, Loki had replied, fear quickening his tongue. He had felt the cold brush of Ragnarök in that moment, and he had known true regret for the first time since the oblivion of the abyss.

And the Devourer had laughed until the wooden beams of her ill-constructed hall shook, and Loki had reached for her throat in his fear —

She had returned his heart to him, fortified as she had blessed it against the memory of Thanos, and she had willed him forth. Then go, Loki Silvertongue, before I change my mind and devour your heart as I have done with the rest, Prove that my mercy is deserved.

It hadn't been, Loki thought, remembering the flutter of Jane Foster's pulse. But he had taken the guise of a raven and flown until his wings could fly no more; he had remade himself under Njörðr's dominion in Vanaheim, strong once again. It had been a plan borne of desperation, and yet it had been sound — to prove Thor was, is, and will always be Loki's alone. To top it all, the throne of Asgard would be within his grasp, if he wished to have it.

He wakes now in Esja Njörðsdottir's skin, the Devourer's laugh ringing in his ears. Mjölnir hums with its star-magics upon the high table pushed up against the bed, and Loki draws in breath after breath, calming Esja's heaving breast with Thor's heavy warmth beside him. ]

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It does not need to.

[ Her answer puzzles him. Doesn't she know that he would bring her comfort, any sort of comfort he was capable of, without asking anything in return? She does not need to serve him in all things. She already serves him in innumerable ways. He is nothing if he lacks her affection. Beyond taking her to wife, taking her to his bed, he imagines there is a wisdom in her which knows him deeply no matter what secrets he keeps to his own heart, that the caress of her finger along his jaw is a kindness and an understanding that he had never looked for in the one whom he must eventually marry, for the production of heirs. He catches her hand in his, turning his face to kiss her white palm. ]

I dreamed too.

[ The words are heavy, for he remembers from his sleep the beloved faces of those that slipped away from his hands and the burden of sorrow. Asgard's golden peace does not bring him the easy, laughing solace it did when he was younger. More and more, he turns to the company of his wife for that. His hands wander, gentle, over her skin, more for the pleasure of touch than the intent to arouse. There are many mornings when he wakes with desire so hot in his veins he must have her at once, have her with her legs wrapped tight around his waist and her voice whispering wicked things into his ear, but there are other mornings when the urge to lie entwined with her is contenting enough. ]

So you see, there was tumult written into the night.

[ Once, Loki had wished for Thor's vulnerabilities to be as blood vessels visible under the skin, such that Loki could sink the point of his knivfe into them and let the blood blot out that golden Æsir skin. Now, his fury has been banked by time's passing, but hates the sight of those vulnerabilities upon Thor — he had tried for a millennium, armed with the alternate extremes of mischievous cruelty and the kindness of brotherhood, to eke out the loadstone of greatness behind the arrogance. But it hadn't been Loki who had made vain Thor into a king, it had been the mortals and their flash-floods of ineffectual courage.

And even now, Thor knows that sadness more intimately than anything else. For the King of Asgard to be defined by petty ties to the inhabitants of a short-sighted realm like Midgard: it no longer burns, not as it once had, but it is a constant reminder that Loki is wasted at Thor's side. That is his only true destiny; one day, he will rise again amongst the stirrings of war and malcontent, and he will again play the role that was writ for him.

Esja will serve Asgard as a Queen. She will bear Thor's heirs, one da, children painted with seiðr of such complexity that they will be Æsir alone. She will play her part, until Loki is ready to don his golden horns again. The Devourer will see: the threat of his dominion in the realms cannot be allayed by the simple promise of Ragnarök. Every day, Loki tells himself such. And every day, he promises that the next will be the beginning of Asgard's end. ]

For shame, then. You must not have dreamt of me.

[ Her words are equally solemn, but she delivers them against Thor's throat, under the hinge of his jaw, letting him feel the smiling curve of her mouth.

Because Loki cannot admit that Esja knows to navigate happiness with the skill of one accustomed to it, just as he cannot admit that this is the answer that the Devourer had sought to retrieve from him. Esja does not exist. ]

I did not.

[ The heaviness of the dream lingers on him still, but Thor closes his eyes as Esja presses her mouth to his throat, and a smile curves his lips without forethought, a response to the smile he can feel against her skin: once again she brings him consolation. And he does not want to dwell on the sadness of dreams, hers or his, but tease them both to a better frame of mind. She seems to be flying ahead of him in that. A hand tangles in the fine smoothness of her raven hair, fingers woven loving and possessive through the strands. ]

It was nothing so sweet as you.

[ He shifts, rolls them over in one unbroken motion, pinning her to the mattress beneath him in his arms, his mouth finding hers in a gentle kiss. It lingers, and his fingers go once again to her hair and smooth out the dark strands of it into a fan across the pillow, so that when the kiss at last breaks he can look at her with a shining black halo, and wish to lose himself in her beauty and wisdom and peace. ]

I have not spoken much, have I? [ The words come without forethought as he nuzzles the smooth line of her throat. ] --Of my family.

[ Loki is too skilled of an actor to allow Esja's body to tense at the direction Thor has turned the meandering conversation, but the unease lays just below the illusory skin. He doesn't need to hear the reaffirmation of what he has known to be true for an age. For longer than an age, even — before Loki knew what he was, he knew first what he was to Thor, and the downward spiral of their shared experiences only crosshatched the distance between them until it solidified into shadow. He knows this, he does not shy from that truth, and still he would not hear it from Thor's lips.

But Esja would, and Loki cannot draw her away when Thor is finally offering her safe passage into the golden halls of his mind. She strokes the broad warmth of his back; her fingertips trace the jut of a shoulderblade, follow the curve of his spine. She knows of the great Odin and the tranquil Frigga, as much as a princess of Vanaheim should. Of Loki, she would know only the barest sketch of his exploits. Asgard celebrates his service as a prince and says little else.

King Thor wouldn't want wicked Loki's crimes to shame the House of Odin, after all. ]

And neither have I pressed you to speak of them. [ She speaks only after a moment has passed, a murmur so soft that it barely escapes her lips. Her hands slide down his back again, slowly, soothingly. She lets the silence filter back in, letting him take the reins. ]

No.

[ It is painful, to say much of them. To take the risk of inviting back in unleashed memories. Esja has never asked him to do that for her. Her warm arms and her soothing touch invites oblivion, if he should want it; he need say nothing in the end, only let the gentle allure of her do its work. But after a moment he shifts position again, returning to his back. His hands urge her with him, draw her to lie close against him, and he strokes the dark fall of her hair. ]

Odin and Frigga are gone. Any Aesir in the meadhall will sing of them to you, if you want to hear their tales. You've heard some of them already. [ He hesitates. ] I don't know that my brother is dead. He has gone too far from me. Word of him does not reach me anymore.

[ It is not that he has never spoken of Loki. He has told her one or two tales of their youth, fighting giants and wooing giantesses, hunting strange beasts across far realms, gambling Mjolnir away and winning it back. Tricking and being tricked again. Nothing was ever so much fun if Loki was not with him. He never told her of how they became enemies, but he does so now, in a slow and halting way by which path he must confess to Jane as well as the years ignoring the responsibilities of a future king in favor of Midgard. It is a relief, a balm to his weary mind to have the words spoken aloud as they have not been for very long. To confess baldly at the end of it, with tears standing out in his eyes, that it was his fault. That he knows now he taught his brother to hate him. ]

[ Yes, Loki thinks. This moment is the culmination of centuries of bricklaying, of an eternity spent wearing this hatefully beautiful face. A layer of ice spreads itself over Esja's fingers, sharpened into a cruel points at the apex of her fingernails; it would take but a flick of her hand to rend Thor-king's glorious existence apart. Perhaps she would raise her head in the beat of silence before the Valkyrie came to collect Thor's body for his final journey to the halls of Valhalla, perhaps she'd let her eyes flicker to green. And Thor would die with tears in his eyes and Loki's name upon his lips, taking the truth with him to the golden halls, never to haunt Asgard again. The torment that Loki has suffered for millennia would be repaid in whole, and Loki's ascension would be absolute. Queen or King of Asgard, it mattered not; he would be free of the past, and free to smash the Nine Realms into bloody oblivion.

There will be prophecies and prophecies, the world and its complexities without end, and yet chaos cannot be contained by the simple lines of fate. Loki is not of the Æsir, and neither is he of the Jötun, and so the Devourer holds no dominion here.

The ice melts from Esja's fingers, leaving a cold stain on Thor's abdomen where her arm had been draped. Before he has opportunity to ask, however, she presses herself up, the fall of her hair bracketing Thor's face.

The agony in those eyes, as if Thor can understand a fraction of what Loki has done, what Loki has seen, it is a mirror and a curse both. Esja's hands shake when she cups Thor's cheeks to brush his tears away, but the expression has seeped from her face. ]

The Vanir warn of the Liesmith in our teaching chambers, where the first lessons of the arcane arts are issued. A Jötun beast, they say, one who did not deserve the gifts of seiðr that he claimed. [ Her voice is soft, almost inaudibly so. ] Be at peace, I bid you, for even after all you've told me, I can only say this: that it must be better to earn the hatred than the love of such a man.

[ The cold upon his breast is something he might give more attention to if he were not lost in the annals of memory and wandering in his grief; as it is, he looks as Esja with confusion as she climbs up over him to take her face between his hands. Doesn't she understand? The thing that he confessed to finally, that he should have told her long ago: that he was unworthy, in the end, of his brother, and Loki knew it long before he did, and hated him too much to let him try and make up for it. ]

No. You are wrong, wife, my love.

[ His voice is a vast weariness. He takes her hands and pulls them to his mouth and kisses them one by one. He does not deserve her beauty either, he thinks, or her comfort, and he cannot understand what has brought her to him or why she offers him her quiet love. ]

He was not a beast, he was my brother. He was the cleverest I have ever known, and there were no sharper or sweeter words than those from his lips, and seiðr from his fingers was an art. I did not know enough to admire him so when we were younger, but even when he was my enemy I loved him. [ He tries to smile. ] Did they truly tell you of him when they taught you sorcery? But, wife, none of the Vanir knew him as Thor son of Odin did.

[ Perhaps Loki might have preferred the star-forged crush of Mjölnir's fury to the vulnerability that Thor now wears upon his face. There are memories in this moment, tugging at the edges of Esja's glamor and threatening to free a whisper of his true self from the confines of his illusory prison.

Esja would draw the pain from Thor like poison from a snakebite, pressing her lips to the wound and drawing it out moment by inevitable moment. But Loki, confronted with the reality of Thor's expanse of sentimentality, would rather burn the entirety of it. Yes, therein is the sum of it all: he would set Thor's heart aflame until nothing remained but flakes of ash, so that no one else could take the place where Loki, once called Odinson, held dominion. ]

Thor — [ It's Esja's voice, Esja's soft white hands that stroke Thor's cheeks, Esja's dark eyes that hold Thor's gaze, and yet there is only Loki's emphasis in the murmured name.

And oh! — in that second, how dearly Loki wishes for the cleansing wash of the Tesseract, she whose power had flooded Loki's veins and given him purchase in the minds of any she would touch. None of this would matter then — Thor would be his, lost to the numbing calm of the Cube, and Loki would once again belong solely to himself.

Esja, wearing Loki's torment, traces the curve of Thor's half-hearted smile with fingertips still bitterly cold from the aborted spell. ] ⁸ how long will you continue to shackle your heart thus? [ She smiles like forgiveness; her cold fingertips begin to warm against Thor's skin.

Loki would raze all of the nine realms and the lands forth if it meant turning back the hand of time and willing Esja out of existence. ] And yet you know he is lost to you as he has been lost for millennia — you have not searched for him since I have known you. Instead, I would see you fill your mind with hope and gladness for the future rather than dwelling on sins long since committed and longer since absolved.

[ Esja's fingers are so frigid they nearly make him wince. Like his brother calling forth the true nature of his Jotunn self, blue-skinned and bitter cold...why has he not seen before the ways that Esja resemble him, the ways she reminds Thor of Loki? It is no wonder that she became so dear to him, that he loved her at once as he had loved no other potential wife. He smiles and kisses her fingertips, heedless of the cold. ]

He would not have words like that for me, sweet wife. You might urge me to forgive myself, but he would not—he does not want to be forgotten, my brother, no matter how far he strays from my side. No matter how he tries to sever what is between us. He wants to haunt my mind and my heart—why does he not come back?

[ Always Loki had come back. Thor relied on it, even when Loki went too far for him to follow: that he would come back, to attack him and taunt him and try to cause mischief and destruction; he never wanted badly enough to be alone, he never tried hard enough to know what true solitude meant. He feels, again, the burn in his eyes, the tightness in his throat, and this time Thor sits up, clasping Esja close, pressing his face to hers as the tears spill down his cheeks. ]

I fear he is dead and will never return to me. Or he would have come back, before now: I know that he loves me even if he hates me. I know that he cannot keep away.

[ The easy way that Thor sketches Loki's motivations would have enraged him once (of course Thor centers the narrative about himself, always, always), but now he can only bow to the bitter truth of it. Indeed, he is here now to cause mischief and destruction, regardless of the comfort his current form may bring, and Thor's succinct reprisal of whom - and what - he was cultivated to become serves as a much-needed reminder.

Because he is Loki, born of winter, raised in shadows, ever scornful of all that is good and true. Thor, for all his new-found wisdom, cannot see that Loki has strengthened his hold simply by keeping away.

Esja winds her arms about Thor in return, holding him to her breast as he weeps. The mighty Thunderer, risen to the level of the Allfather himself, and yet still he is but a squalling babe. ]

And what would you do, as King of Asgard, if he were to return to you in disgrace and disrepute? [ It's phrased as a question, but the answer lies in her tone: as you must. ] Would you prefer the inevitable suffering and destruction to the grief that now plagues your heart alone?

Edited 2012-08-08 16:04 (UTC)

[ As always, he quiets when she speaks, a storm passing over. Only here, with her, would he ever have dared to let the storm come, to make his grief known. He trusts her with the entirety of his heart, the way Odin must surely have trusted Frigga. He knows how fortunate his father was in such a wife; he knows how fortunate he is. ]

I could not ask for that, though I might hope. [ His voice is faintly bleak. ] I would be wrong to risk Asgard's destruction. But I wonder, sometimes, if I should not have renounced the throne and followed him, instead of waiting for him to return. Perhaps he would not have wanted to be my brother, still. But at least he would have known I wanted him and not the throne.

[ He looks at her gravely, troubled. ]

Is it wrong of me, do you think, to wonder so?

[ For a moment, catching Thor's troubled gaze, Loki wonders if Esja's skin is as transparent as it suddenly seems to be, if Thor had stepped into the trap armed with guile and foreknowledge of the creature to whom he had vowed his faith and fidelity. Why else would he offer so easily a path to the innermost chambers of his heart? How can it be anything but false?

Something quiet and vicious has crept into Esja's tone, and Loki, while aware, makes no attempt to disentangle himself from her. ]

Wrong? [ She lets out a breath like a half-formed laugh. But her grip on him has tightened, her fingers pressing bruises into his arms. ] What is wrong is that you believe you could have made a difference, my husband. The fate of the Nine Realms may hinge on your whims and fancies, but the madness of your brother follows no such petty rules.

Edited 2012-08-08 18:15 (UTC)

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gosh i'm sorry for my slow

no worries, we have all the time in the world!

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