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There was pain tearing through his abdomen, ripping him open. Poison, burning him, flaying him apart, radiating out from the hole through his stomach to tear at every vein and nerve. In his ears, the sound of harsh breaths and rasping, wet coughs, like a dying animal.
Dying.
But this was meant to be death.
This was not death. Death was not supposed to hurt.
It had not hurt like this before.
Thor's arms had cradled him, and Loki had felt himself drifting away, consciousness bleeding away into darkness as death took him at last.
He was not supposed to wake up.
A cough rattled through him, sending a spike of pain through his chest as something wet exploded out of his mouth, dripping down his chin. Yet it was not the iron tinge of blood he tasted, but something bitter, like bile.
With another cough that burst through his burning, torn body, forcing more wetness up his throat that nearly set him choking, Loki curled on his side. Small, sharp rocks pressed into his cheek, and he was unable to do more than let the liquid drain out of his mouth. With the next cough – a choking, wheezing sound that splattered the wetness across the ground – his eyes opened into slits.
It was bleak, wherever he was (Helheim, or Niflheim, not Valhalla), the world split between endless black and endless grey, everything blurred. Only one spot of colour stood out, and Loki stared at it, drowning in it, or maybe he was drowning in the liquid pouring out of his mouth or the pain in his stomach or the fire in his veins.
One spot of colour, arching out in the endless black. Green cloth, peeking out from under a tarnished gold gauntlet; black leather cut into strips, artfully arrayed to contrast the green.
At the end of it all, next to the bright green and tarnished gold, clawing at the dirt in spasms, was blue.
*
It was a special day, a day when Father showed him and Thor some of the wonders gathered from around the Nine Realms and beyond. The last time they had done something like this was about decade ago, when Father had showed them both the vault. Now Father thought he and Thor were old enough to see the weapons collections.
(And Loki was proud that even though he was younger than Thor, Father still decided that he could join them. That Loki was old and responsible enough to match Thor.)
“And this is the Twilight Sword, the Sword of Surtr,” Father had said, guiding them towards an enormous sword, one that would probably need at least three Eldjotnar to carry it. And another two to help them swing it at anything. They would look as ungainly as Loki when he tried to use a training sword, though admittedly the training swords were not quite as big compared to Loki as that sword would be compared to a Jotun.
“A rare artifact,” Father continued, as Thor and Loki gazed up at the sword, handle so high above them that they could barely see it. “Taken from Sutr at the beginning of the ages, so that he might never use it in his mad conquest to destroy the realms.”
“Why would he want to do that, Father?” Loki asked. It seemed ridiculous that someone would want to destroy the realms. Then where would anyone live?
“But we'd stop him if he did,” Thor butted in, looking up at Father with a grin. “All of us. Me, you, and Loki, with the rest of Asgard at our backs.”
Father chuckled, and patted Thor on the shoulder. Loki edged a bit closer so Father would put a hand on his shoulder as well. When Father reached down and gave Loki's shoulder a squeeze, Loki tried to hide a smile, though he didn't think he entirely succeeded. “You two are not yet grown,” Father said,“but if the time ever came, then yes, we would. And Loki, we do not know why Sutr wishes for the end of our realms. His reasons are long lost to time. However–” Father turned and steered them to another ancient weapon, this one much smaller, more like a dagger than a sword. It was placed on a high pedestal, the naked blade held upright on a stand. “–There are some bent on destruction of the realms whose reasons we do know.”
“You mean the Dark Elves,” Loki said, remembering the some of the tales Mother and the nursemaids would read, and he was pleased when Father nodded.
“Is this one of their blades?” Thor asked, bounding closer to the pedestal.
“Yes, it is one of their nefarious weapons and – don't touch it.” Thor's hand froze inches from the blade, and he looked back at Father, eyes wide and startled at Father's sharp tone. Loki was a bit afraid as well, though he tried not to cower back as Father grabbed Thor's hand away from the dagger. Then, gently, Father clasped Thor's hand and knelt so he was eye-to-eye with Thor. Gesturing at Loki to come closer until he and Thor were side-by-side, Father said sharply, angrily, “I do not want you – either of you – to touch the blade. It is poisoned, tainted with a dark magic that infects those whose blood it touches, and it will kill you. It is not something to play with. Do you understand?”
Frightened by Father's tone and the serious look in his eye, Loki nodded alongside Thor. But Loki could not help the question rising in him.
“You mean it poisons even Dark Elves?” he asked. That seemed dangerous, to wield a blade where an accidental cut would kill the wielder.
When Father's eye swung to him, there was a look in it, and Loki feared for a moment that his question had been wrong or out of place.
But the look passed, and Father sighed, his one eye closing. He stood, letting go of Thor's hand as he did so. “No,” he said, the undercurrent of anger in his voice gone, “there are some races that the poison does not kill. The Dark Elves and some of the more ancient of the Light Elves it will leave untouched, as well as the Jotnar of Jotunheim and Muspelheim.”
“Why not Jotnar?” Thor asked, brow furrowed in confusion, his earlier fear forgotten. Loki could see where his question was coming from. Of all the species in the realms one would want to kill, the Jotnar seemed mostly likely. Although maybe that was also why the Dark Elves were bad, because they would rather the Æsir dead than the Jotnar.
Father's eye grew distant, looking at something above Thor and Loki's head. “The Jotnar's line is ancient,” he explained, “beginning with Ymir, the first being to rise from the Ginnungagap . They are older than even the Dark Elves, who were there before Asgard's reign. This makes their blood strong, the ice of the Jotnar's veins from the cold waves of the river Élivágar, and fire of the Eldjotnar from the molten lavas of Muspelheim, passed down from the beginning of time.”
“So that makes them harder to kill,” Thor said, nodding sagely.
“Was it more difficult, then? To kill them in battle?” Loki asked, even more awed by Father than before, if such a thing was possible. Everyone told stories about Father's victory in Jotunheim, how he had worked his way through the strongest Jotnar in the realm before taking down King Laufey single-handedly. If Jotnar were so powerful, then Father was surely more powerful than all of them combined.
(Loki knew he would never be as powerful as Father; but he wanted to be strong enough that Father would at least be proud.)
Yet Father did not answer for a moment, though his lips were parted as if was about to say something. There was another strange look in Father's eye as he glanced at Loki, a look that Loki couldn't read.
“They fall as any Ás does,” Father said quietly. Then he shook his head, and gestured to the next weapon, an axe whose head was bigger than Thor's and Loki's combined.“Now this one, Skurge's axe, you can touch – but be careful,” Father warned, as Thor was already racing forward, Loki at his side. Together, they tried to lift the giant axe, crying out in victory when they succeeded.
With Father, they made the rest of their way around the room. And when Father dismissed them, they ran out together, planning games where there were swords ten times their size, and Dark Elves and Jotar teaming up against Asgard . Thor and Loki would fight off the enemies together, win together as brothers, as Loki knew they would when they went into battle as men. Loki could not lose with Thor by his side.
*
Thor...Thor should be by his side. Where was he? He had been there; Loki knew he hadn't imagined it.
The liquid was still dribbling out of Loki's mouth. He was coughing it up, nearly choking on it as he twisted his head, looking for golden hair and eyes like Asgard's sky in summer.
Against the grey-black of Svartalfheim (not Helheim, not dead), Thor's brilliance wouldn't be able to hide itself.
Moving brought the other blue hand into view, the dead blue skin of corpse he should be, filthy black nails digging into the filthy black ground. It must be red eyes that scanned the horizon for Thor's light, red like the blood spilling from his abdomen, startling and monstrous against dead blue skin and filthy black dirt.
Moving felt like he was tearing something anew, like he had encouraged the fire (ice) in his veins to intensify, yes, lick at my bones and tear into my (black) heart, flay me me from the inside if that is what I must do to see.
He had to move so he could see Thor.
But he couldn't.
He writhed on the ground and gagging and spluttered and he couldn't see Thor. There was nothing but the black and the grey, the bright green and the tarnished gold, the disgusting blue and the filthy black. And Loki was alone.
(When wasn't Loki alone? Perhaps he really had died alone. Perhaps none of this was real and he was alone in his cell, suffocating on a nightmare. Or perhaps it was a dream, because he had died and he had been content.)
Thor was gone and he had left Loki's body behind to rot in a wasteland.
Or maybe – maybe there was a reason why Loki was alone. Malekith was still alive. Thor couldn't carry Loki, wandering around Svartalfheim with the mortal while looking for a way out to defeat the Dark Elf.
(Loki's body would only slow them down.)
Or they had found a way out, the way they came, the way Loki had showed them – or the Bifrost and Asgard had come for them (not him) – or the clever mortal had found something – or the Convergence, the holes between realms enlarging, had taken them off this realm. They had to stop Malekith, so they had to leave Loki's body – but they were planning to come back, Thor was going to come back for him, Thor wouldn't leave him.
(Why wouldn't Thor leave him? Loki had already had one funeral; he deserved one even less now. The first one had been without a body anyway.)
Or that mortal had convinced Thor to leave.
(That weak, undeserving little mortal that had first stolen Thor's heart away, then stolen Thor himself.)
Or the words Thor had spoken in the dungeons had been true, and Thor's tenderness as Loki died had only been for the memory of his lost little brother. To reassure whatever was left of the brother that it was not alone, for all Thor never wished to see the monster again.
(Loki wondered if his brother was right.)
Or perhaps Thor had seen Loki's Jotun skin as he died, had seen his brother-monster for what it truly was, and hurried off in disgust. The instant the cold dead blue had appeared, Thor had flinched his hands away from the Jotun as if it had burnt-frostbitten him, dropping the lifeless body to the black, rocky ground. And Thor, looking at those marred ridges over fish-blue dead skin, the bloody red beneath half-closed lids, did not have the fortitude to pick it up again and call it brother.
(Loki didn't blame him for that.)
Loki laughed even as he choked and gasped for air. And the air was coming, unfortunately, inflating lungs that were not meant to rise again.
It was getting easier to breathe.
*
It was only a dare, built from bragging just a bit too much in front of their friends. Well, Loki thought they were their friends, but they all seemed to pay attention to Thor more. And they were all older than him, and stronger. Even Sif, the girl, seemed to hold a sword better than Loki. He immediately decided he never ever wanted Father to see how exactly well she fought until Loki was better at sword work himself.
But they had been playing; and then play-fighting, helped by Volstagg, a young and chubby guard who was only a couple of centuries older than them, sneaking out training swords for the five of them and critiquing their techniques (Loki got critiqued the most, but Volstagg was at least nicer about it than their training instructors, who Loki all hated ; Volstagg only told Loki that if he ate more he would get better ). Then, with a bit – well, a lot really, but it was subtle – of nudging from Loki, the play-fighting had turned into a game of telling stories, with Volstagg to decide the victor.
When it had gotten to Thor's turn, he had of course decided to talk about all the greatest weapons of realms and beyond (save Gungnir and Mjolnir), and everyone had started paying closer attention, asking for more details. Everyone except Volstagg, that is, who had said the weapons collections were meant to be kept secret by those privy to its wonders, and he would not hear another word.
But Volstagg had to stay at his post and the rest of them didn't. So when they had relocated to a more private location, Hogun, Fandral, and Sif all said that if the King really trusted them enough to let them see something like the Twilight Sword , then they needed proof. Loki knew they just wanted to see some of the grand weapons; he was quite smug that he got to see them and they didn't, even if they were better with swords than him.
But Thor still wanted to share. And he wanted Loki to help.
Sneaking the other three into the vault was out of the question. And they couldn't exactly drag the Twilight Sword out there, the axe was too big, that sword from Alfheim too hard to conceal and Loki said that was the end of that. No need to show them anything.
“But that Dark Elf dagger is small enough,” Thor protested as they whispered behind a rose bush, where they had retreated to talk about the plan.
“And it's poisoned,” Loki countered, which he thought should be good enough.
Thor made a face. “It's not as if I'm going to poke myself with it. I've handled swords before well enough.”
He didn't have to add an “ unlike you ” at the end. Loki nearly flinched at it anyway. But it wasn't as if Loki couldn't handle weapons too, he loved the feel of daggers and how throwing knives whistled through the air, but swords were always too big and unwieldy; they didn't move right in his hands, and he got laughed at when he got his stance or swing wrong. Moreover, Loki still didn't want to go, didn't want to take a weapon for “their” friends, especially not one that Father had looked so fearsome about touching.
But then Thor added, “Unless you're afraid.”
“Of course I'm not,” Loki growled.
He was. He shouldn't be. He was Odin's son and Thor's brother, and he was going to be a warrior. Warriors weren't afraid of anything.
They settled it with their friends, one poisoned Dark Elf dagger as proof.
It wasn't hard to get into the weapons collection, not when Loki had long ago figured out how to avoid most of the guards and knew spells to conceal the two of them if they were quiet. Besides, even if the guards did see them, they were supposed to bow to the princes, not scold them.
Without anyone the wiser, they were in the weapons vault, sneaking looks behind them as they crept to the Dark Elf weapon. It sat on its pedestal, unprotected, ripe for the taking if someone wanted to steal it away. And if they were tall enough, which Loki didn't think they were.
“ I'm tall enough,” Thor argued when Loki worried, even if he was only taller by a few inches. But maybe Thor was right, because as he reached up for the dagger, one hand grasping the handle and the other under the flat of the blade, Thor didn't seem to have any trouble. Loki stood close, not fretting, not fretting at all, just trying to make sure Thor didn't lose his balance or anything.
Thor was just taking it from its perch when the heavy footsteps burst through the door, the fierce, furious bellow of, “ Thor ! Loki !” blasting into the room.
They both jumped, frightened.
The dagger fell from Thor's grip.
Loki saw it on the way down even as he began twisting towards the door. He saw the thin red line it opened up on the back of Thor's hand before he finished turning, where Father and Mother stood in front of a huffing and puffing Volstagg.
He saw Father and Mother, frozen, Father's face turning from anger to horror, Mother's from worry to fear.
The knife clattered to the ground.
“Out!” Father shouted at Volstagg, slamming the doors in the young warrior's face. Thor was staring at his hand, confused. Loki was staring at Thor, knowing that whatever Father had said before couldn't be true, or that the knife was so old the poison wouldn't work, or that the cut was not deep enough. He knew that Thor wouldn't die. It was impossible.
Thor looked up at Loki, shock written into his features, and Loki wanted to tell him that it was all right, he would be fine, he would not die , but Loki found he couldn't move. He saw, around the little cut, something greyish black like smudged dirt, which was probably from earlier, they had been playing the dirt after all.
Mother was there, suddenly, grabbing at Thor's hand, and Loki could feel the abrupt surge of magic she poured into Thor. Healing magic.
Even though Thor didn't need healing because Thor wouldn't die.
But Thor was falling, his back leaning against the pedestal as Mother murmured to him, her golden magic glowing around Thor's hand as Thor grew limp. And then there was a rough hand on Loki's shoulder, and he couldn't resist as Father dragged him away from his brother and mother, pulling him back to just beyond the edge of the pedestal. Father was sitting him down and then Father knelt, a hand on Loki's shoulder while the other was behind Father's back.
“Loki, listen to me,” Father said, his gaze burrowing deep into Loki's. “The dagger cut you and Thor on the way down, but there is a way to save both of you. I just need you to relax.”
“Odin,” Mother said sharply, a warning, but Loki didn't know what for and if she had anything else to say she didn't say it, focused on Thor. And now Loki was scared.
“W-what? But I...” He hadn't felt the dagger cut his skin, hadn't felt any pain. It was only Thor who had been hurt. And Thor wouldn't die.
It was poison to any Æsir, Father had said. How could Thor not die?
Loki couldn't help it. He started to cry.
Father's hand gently pushed Loki back until Loki was laying on the ground. There was a frantic note in Father's voice as he said, “I just need you to go to sleep Loki, just for a little while.”
“Are we going to die?” Loki whispered, tears falling across the side of his face and into his hair. He saw something glinting in Father's other hand, the one that wasn't on his shoulder. It looked like a knife.
“No.” Father lay a hand across Loki's forehead, and Loki could feel the heavy magic in it as he saw the knife come closer. “Sleep,” Father and his magic commanded, and Loki did as he was told.
*
The world was becoming sharper, the line between black and grey becoming more distinct.
“Thor,” he mewled, whimpered, gasped. No one answered.
Once, hesitantly, “Jane Foster,” he whispered, in case the mortal was close by.
(Perhaps she would slit his throat for him, a mercy Thor might not be willing to give.)
“Thor–” he began to cough out again, then stopped. He did not want Thor to see him like this, if Thor hadn't already. The Ás skin peeled back until only the monster remained. And if Thor had seen it, then Thor had long fled, and there was no use calling to him now.
Carefully, he rolled onto his belly, black poison dripping from his mouth – for it was poison, and the more that he vomited up, the more that sprayed against the ground next to dead-blue hands, the more that the ice froze out the poison, the quieter the fire in his bones became.
On weak arms, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. Then realized his mistake when his insides slithered forward, trying to escape through the wound in his stomach with a sickening lurch. Shakily, he heaved himself to his knees, dead blue and filthy black and poison-splattered hands pressed against his wound.
Poison was trickling off his chin in thick rivulets as he looked out across the bleak landscape, deserted but for the dead and the not-quite-dying. As monstrous, blood-red eyes stared at nothing, a memory came to him. One of two children listening so so attentively to a father that only cared for one of them, and a dagger of foes long thought dead.
It wasn't much comfort to know the Allfather had been proven wrong in something, at least.
The air was starting to feel cooler. Loki looked down at his hands pressed against his stomach. They were growing paler, his nails seemed to be losing that filthy black, and under his fingers he could feel ripped skin knitting together.
Jotnar healed just as well as Æsir did.
*
Loki's head was fuzzy and his limbs felt weak. He was laying on something soft, and he heard voices, a low murmuring close by.
“...were lucky we were there. You knew enough of the required spells and there was no one else, not in this realm, that could help him.”
That sounded like Father's voice. There were footsteps as well, but lighter than Father's, and moving back and forth as if pacing. Loki felt pillows beneath his head and sheets pulled up to his waist. He wondered why he was in a bed. Hadn't he been somewhere else, earlier?
“I still don't like it, Odin.” That voice was Mother's. Loki opened his eyes, squinting against the light, to see Father, a white and gold spot in the centre of the room (what room? Where was he?). And Mother, her bright blue dress blurring as she went back and forth past the foot of his bed, turning at the foot of another bed.
Another bed? Slowly, Loki turned his head until the other bed came into view. On it lay Thor, his eyes closed, his face pale. It was too pale, paler than Loki's. Thor didn't move, his chest barely rising and falling, and through the muzziness in Loki's head he began to feel afraid. Distantly, he could hear Mother saying, her voice upset, “We can't use him like this and–”
“Would you have preferred to let your flesh and blood die instead? That, rather than letting–”
“ Do not say that to me.” The harshness in Mother's voice, the outrage, brought Loki's head snapping around to look at her, even though the movement made his head pound. “We should at least tell him–”
“Hush,” Father said abruptly, his hands on Mother's shoulders, and when Loki glanced towards him, Father was staring straight at Loki. Mother, after letting out a sound of protest, fell silent when she saw Loki too. Then she was rushing to Loki's side, one hand immediately stroking down his hair as she crouched beside his bed.
“Loki, love, do you feel all right?” she asked, eyes lit with concern. Loki nodded, even though the motion made his head swim.
“Thor?” he croaked out, as he began to remember, the knife, its arc as it fell, the thin red cut on the back of Thor's hand. And Father said Loki had been cut too, but Loki felt alive, if too tired to move very much. Loki attempted to turn his head to look at Thor again, though was Mother blocking his view. “Is Thor...?”
Mother smiled, tears in her eyes, and kissed him on the forehead. “Yes, Thor is fine. You are both fine and soon you will be healthy again.”
“You are both very lucky to be alive,” Father said from the other side of the bed, and while his voice sounded angry he looked relieved. “The cuts were shallow enough that we could draw the poison out in time.”
Loki nodded, but he couldn't help from crying again. As he sniffled, Mother moving to wipe away the tears and glancing sharply at Father as she did so, Loki felt something itching on his arm. He moved to scratch it, though his arms felt heavy and clumsy, and when he glanced down he a faint pink line running down his wrist. When he scratched at it weakly, he felt that the skin was rough, like scar tissue.
That must have been where he was cut, he realized, although he did not remember it.
Then Father's hand was on his forehead, and Father said softly, “You are still sickly though, and you both need some rest.” Just as before, Loki felt the heavy press of magic, and he promptly fell asleep.
When he next woke, he felt much better. But what made pleased him most was that Thor was awake as well, no longer so pale and still, and even through Father's scoldings and Mother's reprimands, the happiness that Thor was alive and well did not dim.
He did notice, when he and Thor scrambled to hug each other and sob once they saw the other was alright, that there was a faint pink line on Thor's wrist that matched Loki's. Which did not seem right, as Loki thought Thor had been cut on the back of his hand. But the line faded not a day later, and Loki's not soon after.
It did not matter, after all, not when he and Thor were alive.
*
The poison had stopped filling up his mouth, clogging his throat. He spat the last of it out and lifted one trembling hand to his chin to wipe off the rest. The hand was pale pink once more, hideous scar markings fading, though he could still feel their ridges against his lips.
Drawing his hand away, he turned it over, looking for the faint pink line on his wrist that had disappeared centuries ago. On Thor's wrist there had been a twin, where their wrists must have been pressed together; Loki's monstrous blood freezing out the poison in Thor's, while Mother and Odin's magic directed the transfusion. He wondered if that made him and Thor blood brothers.
Probably not. They probably had to be conscious and willing for the exchange of blood to have any meaning.
(It had meant nothing.)
(It had meant Thor's life; It had meant everything.)
Running a black-smudged finger up along his wrist, repulsive ridges of Jotun skin still rough under his fingertips, he thought on how easily the blood would have run out from the gash. It had not been a large cut, but if left unattended for long, it would certainly bleed him dry.
If he took out a knife and traced that faint pink line again, what would save him this time? Odin, Thanos, Ymir's ice in his veins?
The Norns simply would not let him die. Why try again if he knew it would fail?
And yet...it had been a perfect death. Everything he had never dream for, because he knew he could not have it. He had killed the monster that had slain his mother, the monster that was trying to slay Thor. He had helped save the realms until his body gave out, had apologized on his last breaths. He had done as no one had expected, not even him, and died a warrior's death.
He could have gone to Valhalla. Even if the valkyrja realized their mistake and ripped him away down to Hel, perhaps he could have at least seen Mother one last time. To say he had never meant it, he could never mean it, he's sorry.
Of course, he should know better. A Jotun did not belong in Valhalla.
And in spite of it all, in spite of living and breathing and being, he could not curse his Jotun blood. Even that had been taken from him.
Because Thor would have died without it.
Because, if Loki had been there, he might have been able to save her. If a monster's blood would have been allowed to enter her veins, she might be alive.
He would have cut out his heart and given it to her if it meant she would live.
He would let Father use him like that, again and again, if it would save her.
(Save Thor.)
Perhaps if the Kursed had aimed a bit higher, there would be no Jotun heart to pump that Jotun blood through his veins, and neither Ymir nor Odin nor Thanos could save him then.
(The heart had no use to him now.)
One hand on the ground, one clutching at the hole through his stomach that was becoming more scar than wound, he stood.
The realm swayed. He stumbled, nearly falling again.
The moment passed, and black and grey resolved themselves into ground and horizon once more. Slowly, stiffly, he put one unsteady foot in front of the other.
Then he stopped, for where was he supposed to go? Nowhere wanted him, and where he wanted to go, he could not get to.
Although, there was one other thing not black or grey in this realm. He knew because he had put it there himself. And if Thor or the mortal had any sense, they had probably taken it from him anyway.
With heavy, dragging steps, he trudged his way to the golden Æsir skiff, and wondered if Thor would be disappointed to see him again.