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Any moment now, Loki thinks. He is tempted to look up at the sky, searching for hints of what’s to come, the first signs of the Bifröst beam ripping through the clouds of Jötunheimr.
He cannot afford it though. They are surrounded, with a wide chasm lying beyond them and the army of Jötnar cutting out their retreat. Their attack might have caught the Frost Giants unprepared, but all the advantage it gave them had been spent a while ago. They aren’t facing just Laufey’s personal guard anymore. They are facing an army. An army of Jötnar, surrounded by their element and drunk on anger.
There’s no way for them to win this fight. There never was, not truly, and Thor should never have…
It’s futile, to think about it right now. What’s been done will remain so.
They can still escape. Father knows and Heimdall is watching. They are just waiting for the last possible moment, to give Laufey the false sense of victory before striking.
The Jötnar warriors approach, slowly now, unhurriedly, realizing their prey is trapped. The blades of ice grow around their arms, sharp and deadly.
Before any of them can react, one Jötunn raises his arm and lunges, the blade aimed down, like a hunting spear. Loki sees it piercing Lady Sif’s chest plate as if it was nothing and coming out on the other side, spilling hot blood on the icy ground. Then there are battle cries and more attackers, running at them.
Thor howls in anger and brings up his hammer once more, the lighting gathering around it and, just like that, Loki knows Thor is not going to make it in time. From there, it’s just a split-moment decision. Loki dives, the spell tingling at his fingertips. Then, as soon as his fingers as much as brush against Thor’s arm, Loki’s vision fills with a green glow, and the gravity shifts.
He had no time to aim the spell properly, so he gets thrown forward blindly, until the energy he put into the magic runs out and its hold releases. It spits him out two dozen feet above the ground – too high for comfort, too low to do anything about it. He crashes down onto a snowy slope, shoulder and hip first. The snow neutralizes some of the force of the impact, but not all of it. He exclaims in pain and a flurry of snowflakes fills his mouth and throat. Then there’s a crack, and the ground beneath his body moves sideways. Sideways and down and he tumbles with it, unable to hold onto anything, as the avalanche slides down the slope, gaining speed.
Something hard hits the side of his head and his vision turns dark. He isn’t sure how long that lasts, for, when he regains his senses, he’s lying face down in the snow. His hands are twisted under him and the pressure on his back squeezes his chest and compresses his lungs, and, when he tries to draw a breath, he only manages to force more snow down his airways. He squeezes his eyes shut and focuses. Casting the teleportation spell capable of carrying two people cost most of his energy, but there’s still some left, the last reserve no mage would want to burn unless given no other choice.
Oh, I’m going to regret this tomorrow, he thinks and lets the spell loose. An explosion of power erupts from his fingers. The shockwave hits his body first – it’s in the way and the shock is enough to leave Loki’s organs bruised for days – then the snow above, blowing it away.
Loki drags himself up to all fours, then stays like there for a moment, coughing and wheezing, until he can draw a full, uninterrupted breath again. Only then, he looks around.
The explosion left a small crater, with Loki in the middle. He groans and heaves himself up to his feet. His shoulder and hip are throbbing, there’s a sharp pinch in his side – some sort of internal injury, must be – and a splitting headache at the forefront of his skull. That one he at least knows the source of – magical overexertion from burning up too much of his life energy. All in all, nothing that a good night's sleep, a healing stone, and a couple of solid meals cannot fix.
That has to wait though.
He scrambles out of the crater and looks around. He’s in a valley between two snowy peaks, and all he can see around himself are similar mountains, stretching as far as he can see before the flurry snow in the air blurs the details. The pale star of Jötunheimr is nowhere to be seen, either hidden behind the mountain range or completely beyond the horizon – he has no idea how far away from Utgard he is – which leaves only the faint light of the ring that circles the planet to illuminate his way.
“Thor!” he calls and looks around.
There’s a grunt, somewhere to his right and Loki runs, ignoring the pain in his side. It’s not important, right now.
Thor is lying face first in the snow, his body buried from below hips down, but leaving his shoulders and head exposed, luckily.
Loki falls to his knees and shakes his brother’s arm. Thor grunts and coughs, so Loki helps him turn to his back.
Thor squints and blinks at him for a moment. “What…” he starts, then awareness slowly returns to his eyes. He frowns and springs into a sitting position, pushing Loki away.
Loki stumbles back and lands on his buttocks in the snow. He pulls himself up on his elbows, but, before he can get up, Thor is on his feet. He calls for his hammer. It springs up from where it was buried under the snow, flies through the air and lands itself in Thor’s hand, just like always. Thor aims it at Loki.
“What was that?!” he demands. “Why did you stop me?!”
“I saved your life, Thor,” Loki says. He tries to keep his voice calm, but it’s hard to do, with the injuries and a new wave of battle rush singing in his veins. It’s a precarious position, to be on the other side of Mjølnir when Thor is this angry. Thor’s brotherly love isn’t going to save Loki if Thor decides he has to pay. It never did in the past.
“And forfeited the lives of our friends! How could you!?”
“Thor–“
“Bring us back!”
“I–“
“Bring us back, Loki!” Thor howls and brings Mjølnir closer to Loki’s face, so close the power circling in it stands Loki’s hair on its tips and crackles in his ears. “I have to save them! I have to get back! Bring us back!”
“I can’t!” Loki cries. “I can’t, Thor, I swear to Norns!”
Thor’s infuriated gaze is locked on Loki for a moment longer before he pulls the hammer back and turns away with an angry grunt. “I’ll get back on my own then!” he exclaims and starts walking. He stops after a couple of steps, scratches his beard, turns on his heel, and starts walking in the opposite direction.
“You don’t even know where to go!” Loki calls behind him and, for a moment, he thinks Thor didn’t hear him over the sound of the wind.
Thor takes a couple more steps before he stops and turns back to Loki. “Which way then?”
“I have no idea,” Loki says and sits up, brushing the snow off his armor, trying to ignore the missing gauntlet. He cannot think about it now. He doesn’t want to think about it at all.
“You brought us here! How can you not know where we are?” Thor says, walking back over.
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to plan ahead, Thor,” Loki explains. “We needed to get away from there.”
“No, we didn’t. I had it! I would have them taste the power of the mighty Mjølnir!”
“You already did that. It didn’t work, remember?” Loki says and tries to get up, but it only sets off the cramp in his side again. He collapses back to one knee.
Thor scoffs, but still grabs Loki’s arm to help him up. “It matters not,” he says. “I still have to go back before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late, Thor.”
“Don’t you dare–“
“Thor, listen to me. Just this once!” Loki exclaims, holding onto his brother’s cape when he tries to move away. “Can you stop and think for a heartbeat? Either Father made it in time and they are already safely back in Asgard, or they are all dead. Rushing back to Utgard would do nothing but put you in danger again.”
“No, that’s not–“ Thor starts to protest, then frowns. “Wait, how could Father know?”
Loki presses his fingers to his eyelids. “I told him. Before we left, I sent a guard to tell the All-Father where we were going.”
“Why?! Why would you betray me like that!?” Thor roars, his voice full of righteous indignation instead of the rage from a moment ago, which Loki tentatively counts as an improvement.
“Because I knew you were going to do exactly what you did,” he says with a sigh.
“How could you possibly–“
“Because I’ve known you for fifteen centuries, Thor,” Loki says and tries to make it sound less bitter than he feels, not entirely successfully. He lets out a dejected breath and starts walking.
Fifteen centuries spent in Thor’s shadow, bending to his whims.
“Where are you going?” Thor calls.
“We need to find shelter,” he says and stops. “Before the storm is upon us.”
Since they landed, the wind has grown more piercing, the flurry in the air upgraded to heavy snowfall and the sky grew murky with snow clouds, obscuring the view of stars. The weather of Jötunheimr was harsh and uninviting even on a good day, and getting caught in a snow storm – which, Loki vaguely remembers from his lessons, can last days or weeks here – might just as well mean their demise.
Thor scoffs, turns his eyes and his hammer to the sky, and calls, “Heimdall! Take us home!”
There’s no response, just like Loki suspected there wouldn’t be. If the battle is still going on, somehow, Heimdall’s gaze is elsewhere and if it’s not – he has other problems than guarding the observatory. Like answering to the All-Father for the treason he committed, allowing them to come here in the first place.
That, Loki didn’t expect. He was certain they would be denied passage and that Thor would have to rely on Loki and his ability to walk the secret paths between the Realms. That would buy Loki enough time for the messenger to reach Father and for the whole insanity to be stopped before it even began.
But they weren’t stopped and Loki cannot begin to fathom why Heimdall would just let them go.
No, that’s a lie. He does have one guess, but it’s a guess he doesn’t much like, so he ignores it. There ought to be some other explanation.
Thor calls again, with a very similar outcome.
“Are you done?” Loki asks.
“Why isn’t he answering?”
Loki shrugs, allowing Thor to reach his own conclusions. “We have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Further down the valley. It should give us at least some protection from the wind. And, if we’re lucky, we might find some cave to wait out the worst.”
Thor huffs in displeasure, but starts walking anyway.
They walk side by side for a while, without talking, only the snow scrunching under their boots and the howling of wind breaking the silence.
Thor suppresses a shudder and draws his cape closer around himself and Loki is rather sure his teeth are clanking from cold. Loki observes his brother discreetly for a while, trying to determine if it’s just for show – to let Loki know how much he inconvenienced them both, perhaps – but it doesn’t seem to be. It’s strange, because – while Loki can feel the chill in the air – it doesn’t come close to bothering him as much as it obviously bothers Thor.
It must be because he’s wearing leather with a layer of cloth underneath, while Thor’s armor is mostly metal, no other reason.
Still, a memory floats into his mind uninvited, seemingly at random: the first time they encountered snow. Thor was almost seven years of age and Loki was just past his sixth name day when their mother took them for a trip to visit their maternal aunt on Vanaheimr. The planet – unlike Asgard, stuck in the ceaseless summer – experiences seasons and they arrived just in time to witness the first snowfall of that year. It's one of the earliest memories he can still recall so vividly - his delight at the thin layer of fluff scrunching under his bare feet and the flurry of snowflakes settling on his hair and skin, glistening in the winter sun. And then Mother’s horrified expression, before he was swept inside and forced to wear some more appropriate clothes.
There are more memories flooding in right now – that time he won the contest of swimming in a frost-covered lake on Alfheimr without even trying, or their trips to Midgard’s North, where Loki was fine walking outside of their tent in just a thin shirt, or all the times someone told him his hands felt cold.
Never Mother or Father though.
It’s nothing, he tells himself. Just a coincidence. Or perhaps his godly gift? Thor has his lighting, but Loki never discovered his, so perhaps this unusual resistance to cold is his talent?
But there are more and more details coming to him and they get harder and harder to ignore. All the elusive answers he got when he asked why he was called after a dead Jötnar king or why he didn’t look anything like Thor. All the meaningful silences and rules and punishments bestowed upon him just for asking questions or wandering into the restricted section of the court’s records during his studies.
He grits his teeth and focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. He’s imagining things, that’s what he’s doing. He’s allowing himself to spiral out of control because he’s tired and hurt. He will laugh at himself once he finds himself back in his own bedchambers, the hearth burning and chasing the dark thoughts away.
---
They are lucky and they do find a cave. The small entrance is hidden underneath an overhang and they almost walk past it before Loki spots it.
“In there,” Loki says and brings forth a witchlight. It’s a simple spell, one a child can learn, and not very energy-hungry. But Loki’s energy is completely exhausted and even such primitive magic like that tugs painfully at his core, so he keeps the light faint, barely enough to disperse the worst of the darkness as they crawl into the small opening.
The grotto is a hollow sphere, and it looks like it had been drilled into the solid ice by means of magic or tools, and not a natural feature. Or perhaps it’s a nest of some kind of creature?
Thor doesn’t comment on it though, so Loki doesn’t bring it up. If it’s truly some kind of beast, they can kill it. They may even get a decent meal out of it.
“How long do you think it will take?” Thor asks, settling down. The cave is just a dozen steps in diameter and the floor is sloping towards the middle, so it takes him a while to find a comfortable enough position. Loki mirrors it, leaning against the sloping wall on the opposite side of the grotto.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think we should wait till the sunrise before deciding what to do next.”
He doesn’t have a plan on where to go. They are on Jötunheimr, so, for all he knows, there’s nothing to find, just the same frozen wasteland in every direction.
“What if Heimdall doesn’t answer? What if something happened back home?” Thor asks, putting Loki’s trepidations into words.
Loki sighs. “We’d have to find our way back to Utgard,” he says. The rifts he knows about are located close to the Jötnar capital fortress.
Thor nods and doesn’t ask about details. He doesn’t ask how they would even know which way to go – Loki doesn’t, and the longer he rakes his mind for the more precise information about Jötunheimr geography, the less sure he is on how to find it – or how long would it take (“days” is Loki’s guess, unless Thor’s strong enough to carry them both, which is questionable with battle exhaustion that must be settling in his limbs right now just as it did in Loki’s a good while ago) or how Loki would open the path with his magic drained.
Loki doesn’t bring any of it up, not wanting to fret Thor when he’s in such a sour mood. Besides, it won’t come to that, he’s sure. Even if the lack of response from Asgard is Father’s way to teach them a lesson, the answer will come, sooner than later.
After all, Thor’s here, and Father wouldn’t leave him to suffer for long, no matter how grievous his offense was.
“I’ll try getting some sleep then,” Thor grumbles and wraps his cape around himself. “You should do too. You may need your strength tomorrow.”
Loki nods, smiles at Thor, and doesn’t let the smile fade before his brother turns away from him and covers his head with his arm.
He doesn’t tell Thor that someone needs to keep watch, for he is sure his brother would remember if he wasn’t so tired. Instead, he wraps his arms around himself – not because he’s cold, but because that way he doesn’t have to look at his shattered gauntlet – brings the light down and lets it fade into a single ember. Then he waits.
---
It’s harder now, to keep the intrusive thoughts at bay, when he has nothing to distract himself with. The wind is still howling outside, but the entrance slowly gets covered with snow, muffling it, and he only has Thor’s snoring to both keep him awake and entertain his idle mind.
It doesn’t help for long.
Soon, he cannot push the thought away and he unfurls his arms. He takes off his glove and drags his fingers against the skin of his forearm, looking for some hidden damage or for some scarring, but it’s as smooth as it ever was and there’s nothing to indicate an injury that would be concealed somewhere deeper – his muscles work as intended, the bones aren’t fractured and the joints don’t hurt when he twists and turns his arm around. As if it never happened.
But it did, and Loki knows it. He needs to just close his eyes for the scene to float to the foreground of his mind, as vivid as it was when it was actually taking place.
He also knows another thing – he has run out of excuses. He’s run out of lies to tell himself and it’s time to face the truth.
There’s a bundle of magic, stashed in the back of his mind. It’s been there since he was a child, it’s been there as long as he could remember. When he started learning arcane arts and taught himself to recognize spell traces, he asked Mother about it.
“Just a protective charm, my dear,” Mother told him that day. “I placed it there myself, to keep you from harm and illness, just like I did for Thor when he was a babe. Soon, you’ll be old enough to keep it up yourself.”
And Loki did, not ever once questioning it, reveling in its presence in the dark times. It was, in his mind, a testament to his mother’s love.
Only now he realizes it was all a lie.
The enchantment never fired to protect him when he was injured or sick, it never saved him from pain or soothed his aches when they befell him.
It only fired once. Today, when the Jötnar warrior grabbed him.
He searches it out and pulls at it. His core protests at the abuse, already strained, but he pushes through, drawing some more of the very lifeforce keeping him alive to power it.
His light flickers and goes out with nothing to fuel it, and a wave of heat spills over him, the air in the cavern turning from cold to comfortably warm. The pitch-black darkness loses some of the edge and now Loki can see the faint light penetrating through the icy walls of the cave and bouncing off the shiny surfaces, bathing the space in a soft, blueish glow. He can see Thor, still lying curled in his spot, and, when he looks down, his own hands.
His awfully blue, awfully Jötnar hands, with the telling ridges of marks at the backs of his palms and the dark fingernails.
A breath catches in his throat and a whine tears forth from his lungs.
No, it cannot be right! It simply cannot.
He hides his face in his hands, and even that is an eerie feeling – there are lines of markings on his cheeks and chin as well, bumpy and weird and alien.
“Loki?” sounds Thor’s voice. “What’s going on?”
Only then Loki realizes he’s been crying. He brings his hands down, his heart beating its frantic rhythm somewhere in his throat, then meets Thor’s gaze. He curls his hands into fists and braces for the attack.
It doesn’t come. Instead, Thor’s eyes dash around blindly, sliding over Loki’s face without noticing it. “Are you still here, brother?”
Thor cannot see him, Loki realizes. For him, the cave is still completely dark.
“Loki?” Thor asks again, and starts groping around.
Loki pulls his legs to his chest, to remove himself from Thor’s reach. He cannot allow his brother to touch him now. “I’m here,” he risks saying. His voice sounds like it always had, if not for the thrum of emotion in it.
“Why did you let the light go off? This isn’t funny.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“Bring it back on!” Thor demands. “I cannot see a thing.”
Panic floods Loki’s veins, urging him to flee. Run away before Thor can see him. But he knows he cannot. He wouldn’t make it to the exit before Thor realized something wasn’t right.
He has to change back. He has to hide it, before it’s too late.
But, when he reaches for the strand of magic, it slips away from him. As if it was somehow… incompatible with this new, unfamiliar form. As if it wasn’t made for him, not anymore.
“I… I can’t, Thor.”
“Why?”
“I…” he starts and doesn’t know how to continue, his mind suddenly blank and unable to provide him with a believable lie when he most needs it.
“Squeeze it out, for Norn’s sake!”
New tears prickle behind Loki’s eyes and another pathetic sob tears forth from his lips.
“Loki?” Thor says, his voice suddenly softer, quieter. “Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” Loki says and it comes out whiny and tearful. He is hurt, inside and out. He is lost and confused, and all he yearns for is Thor’s embrace.
Thor falls to his knees and crawls his way towards him.
“No!” Loki protests. “Please, don’t touch me!”
“Why?” Thor asks and frowns, but does stop. “What’s happening?”
There’s now a heat of shame burning on Loki’s cheeks. Thor is his brother and he cares about Loki. Loki should have never doubted him. Never should have tested him like he did.
“Will you… Will you promise not to attack me if I show you?” he asks.
“Of course, Loki.”
Loki closes his eyes, draws in a long breath through his nose, and lets the air out through his mouth. Then he brings forth the witchlight again. That spell also feels weird, but it works and there’s now a glow on the other side of Loki’s closed eyelids.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then there’s a growl and something hits Loki in the chest. He gets thrown backward and his head collides with the wall. Something cracks and Loki cannot tell, if it’s his skull or the ice. Warmth spills over his neck and trickles behind the collar of his coat.
It takes a lot, but he forces his eyes open.
Thor’s face is right above him, his eyes narrowed in anger. “What kind of dirty trick is this?! Who are you? What have you done to my brother!?”
“Thor,” Loki tries to say, but only manages a soundless, strained wheeze. “Please, it’s me.”
“Don’t lie to me, creature!” Thor yells and pushes down on the hammer, still pressed to Loki’s chest. Something snaps and Loki’s vision fills with red spots, as pain spills all over his chest.
“Please,” he wheezes and chokes. There’s now blood in his mouth, but he cannot guess where it’s coming from.
The light goes off. Loki can no longer focus enough to keep it up.
Thor roars in rage and grabs a handful of Loki’s hair, then starts dragging him outside. Loki tries to struggle, but his limbs no longer obey him, heavy and uncoordinated.
“I will ask you one more time, beast!” Thor growls.
They are outside now. The storm seems to have passed and the ring shines in the sky like a string of precious stones spilled over a dark lake.
“What did you do to my brother?!” Thor yells and brings the hammer down.
This hit gets Loki in the stomach. Something ruptures and the air fills with a cloying smell of blood and bile.
“You… promised,” Loki whispers. His vision narrows and darkens. He can no longer move, his limbs growing senseless and cold.
It’s funny, he never would have thought the Jötnar could feel the cold.
Mjølnir falls again, smashing Loki in the face. His jawbone cracks and he chokes on blood.
Then it ends, and there’s only the sound of Thor’s footsteps, walking away.
The last thing Loki sees, before his consciousness fades, is the beam of the Bifröst, smashing down on the icy plain, sweeping Thor away towards his home, leaving Loki alone among the frozen wasteland of Jötunheimr.
Right where he belongs.
---
There’s a crackle of fire, somewhere nearby and the smell of smoke in the air.
He tentatively opens his eyes. The light burns for a moment, but – once it passes – he can see a line of girders, old, wooden ones, covered in soot from the fire, so dark it had to accumulate over countless years.
There’s a roof above his head, something soft underneath his back and the room is pleasantly warm. Since the last thing he remembers is bleeding out in the snows of Jötunheimr, it’s all utterly baffling.
He turns his head to look around and a wave of pain washes over him. He squeezes his eyes and waits it out.
“You shouldn’t be moving yet,” someone says nearby. “You’ve got pretty beaten up. It’s a miracle I found you as soon as I did.”
Loki forces his eyelids to open. There’s a person sitting by his side. A Jötunn, and Loki cannot decide on their gender. Their features are softer and their stature smaller than that of the warriors Loki met at Laufey’s court, but their voice is low and deep. Their red hair is shaved at the sides and gathered into a braid on the top of their head.
A new bout of panic fills his senses. He shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t…
“Calm down,” the person says and places a steadying hand on Loki’s shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you. The Asgardian did good enough of a job at that.”
Loki blinks.
“I’ve seen the beam,” the person says. “That’s how I found you, actually. By the way, my name’s Vænn. In case you wanted to know who you owe your life to,” they add and smile, shoving off the rows of small, pointy teeth.
Thank you, Loki wants to say, remembering his manners, but it comes out as a guttural gurgle, his mouth not obeying him. He carefully explores with his tongue. Some of his teeth are missing and his jaw has been wired shut. He grunts in protest.
“Sorry about that. The bone wouldn’t heal right without it,” Vænn explains. “Which is a shame, because I can’t wait to ask you how the lost son of Laufey made his way to Jötunheimr after ages of being imprisoned by the Asgardians, just to find himself beaten half to death and abandoned on the Southern plains.”
Laufey’s son.
It all clicks into place, now, and that realization hurts more than all the broken bones combined. His vision grows blurry, his eyes filling with tears he cannot hold back.
Vænn’s hand brushes against his cheek and runs through his hair in a slow, comforting gesture. “No need to cry, my boy,” Vænn says softly, “You’re finally home. We will take care of you now.”
Asgard is my home, he wants to say. But he can’t. Not because his jaw is wired shut, but because he realizes now, with full clarity, that it is no longer true. Perhaps never was.
A whimper rises from his throat before he can stop it.
“Shh,” Vænn says and cups his cheek. “It’s going to be fine, you will see. All you need to do now is to rest, stay strong and heal. Will you do that for me?”
Loki nods, closes his eyes, and allows Vænn’s soothing whispers to lull him back to sleep.