what power art thou who from below

Falling through darkness, the only things Loki has to cling to are his own magic, and the corpse of an old friend. If, indeed, he can honestly call Heimdall his friend at all.

“Human stories claimed you and I would fight to the death at Ragnarok,” the little spider murmurs. “But we stood on the same side. And yet, the volva saw clearly enough, because here we fall into Hel together.”

And he thinks he sees a faint gleam of pale light beneath them. This void is not endless.
( Rate yourself and rake yourself, Take all the courage you have left )

((Musical Inspiration))

“Don’t mistake me,” Loki says. “Time travel or not, if you go into this thinking of it as a continuation of the last battle, you will lose. That die has been cast and the consequences cannot be undone.”

( Holy water cannot help you now. A thousand armies couldn't keep me out. )

-------

( And it's an even sum, it's a melody. )
-------

( It's a battle cry; it's a symphony. )

((Musical Inspiration))

“It’s you.” Thor looks enervated, a shadow of himself, dark bruises around his eyes from lack of sleep, hands trembling, his system ravaged by the alternating storms of too much liquor and too fast withdrawal from liquor. For all that, though, he doesn’t look surprised to see Loki. He doesn’t even look surprised to see Loki in his Jotun form.

“Yes,” Loki says quietly. “Hello, Brother.”

( Sometimes I see your face, The stars seem to lose their place )

((Musical Inspiration))

I saw it again this evening
Black sail in a pale yellow sky
And just as before in a moment
It was gone where the grey gulls fly.

If it happens again I shall worry
That only a strange ship could fly
And my sanity scans the horizon
In the light of the darkening sky.

Loki leaves The Scarlet Hooyim early, before crowds gather, with Eindrid in his arms. He’s had a glass of wine, far from enough to affect his senses, but it’s relaxed him and left him contemplative. He takes the long way around the outskirts of the plaza, avoiding the crowds, humming some of the shanties they overheard in the tavern just to entertain the toddler. Not that Eindrid is fussy; he’s far more buzzed on fruit juice and sea songs than most of the tavern patrons can get on liquor, and he babbles and signs about fish and boats as they go.

( when the bridge to Heaven is broken )

((Musical inspiration))

Loki is careful in the wake of his breakdown.

Abandoning the children to lurk in the Wilds and sort himself out is simply not a possibility. Neither is passing over the incident like nothing happened. A balance of sorts must be struck, and days are split between lessons and friends willing to watch them with him, to sit by his side and make themselves his moral support. It turns out there is no shortage of friends, and while Loki is more inclined to chalk that up to the children’s charisma than his own worthiness, it helps to see it.

At night, he has Mrs. Hedgeworthy, or a friend staying over, or both.

It’s not really the children that are the issue, of course. It’s him, and the crushing weight of the loss they all bear and cannot relieve from one another.

( cut for length )

((Musical inspiration))

Loki tells the children strange stories at bedtime, fairy tales surprisingly dark for little ones who have seen such horror. Not all of them end happily. In a way, though, it seems to reassure them, his half-whispered narratives of beautiful ogres and cruel kings and brave children. The world is a big, frightening, wild place, and all that stands between them and destruction are the bright flames of their will, and their love.

They knew that already. As much as they need to feel safe, they also need to feel understood, and to know that the bleak terror they’ve seen is not peculiar to them. That’s part of why Loki keeps them. There are better guardians to be found in Asvera, he knows. More responsible, more demonstrative, more patient, than he. But he’s learned the trick of embracing his own pain and rage better than most, and these children will learn it best from him.

Case in point, the four never lash out at one another. Eindrid will hit his stuffed toys, Agnarr will go outside and run until he wears down, Una and Sigrid will kick rocks and beat fallen trees with dead branches until their arms ache, but barely a harsh word passes between the children themselves. Instead, they protect and care for one another. It’s no small feat, though Loki doubts it will last through their entire youth. He is doing something right. That gives him the heart to keep on trying.

It’s not until he sees them interact with the other refugee children of Asgard that he realizes what else is happening to them; he’s created, unintentionally, a small enclave of outcasts.

-----

He brings the four to Asvera to visit, and the people there are pleasant, even warm, though their eyes are wary and wondering when they look at him. By now they know that he is not their Loki; comes from another universe, another Asgard. He is a different Jotun foundling, twice-removed from their people. Because of what he has done for them, there are no harsh words, no turned-away faces. Just quiet, awkward uncertainty, tinged with the faintest blush of awe.

Loki was dead, and walks among them again, a visitor from the Otherworld. Thor is no less a shaman, in his way, with his history of death and rebirth, with his visions, with the ground turning green and growing under his touch. But he is closer to his people. He is of them, and they of him.

Loki never was, and he never will be.

And now, he has the children, and they him. He watches them scamper in the snow with the resident children of Asvera. Some of them, too, he plucked from the Statesman with his own hands just before it was destroyed, but though he concerned himself intimately with their welfare, he did not keep them so close or so long as the four.

As with the adults, there is no overt cruelty amongst the children, and if there is bullying it is so subtle Loki himself cannot spy it at a distance. Nonetheless, he can see the walls, invisible barriers between his children and their peers. One of the girls is reluctant to take Sigrid’s hand for Red Rover. Una charges around after a group that seems to be trying to politely leave her behind (but they reckoned without her persistence.) They do not all look at Agnarr when he signs his words, and it's not because they've forgotten he can't speak.

Yes. It was like this when he was a child, too, he remembers. He was a prince, younger brother of the beautiful Thor, the son of beloved rulers, and yet always looking in from the outside, peering through invisible bars.

“For the longest time,” he tells Mrs. Hedgeworthy absently, “I thought the Mind Stone was fooling me in retrospect. I wasn’t wrong, though, was I? I wasn’t wrong about everything.”

She doesn’t know what he means, exactly, but she clicks her tongue and answers: “No one’s wrong about everything. Even a stopped clock.”

He gives her a wry smirk. “Then perhaps I am that proverbial broken clock. I’m glad I wasn’t completely deceived.”

Still, he’s sorry he passed his curse on to the children. Is it too late? If he should return them to their people, settle them in Asvera…

But that would break their already-lacerated little hearts.

----

“Once upon a time,” he murmurs as he sits by the fire that evening, with Eindrid on his lap, the others draped around him as if he were a source of warmth rather than an icicle in fine leathers, “there was a monster. A giant, with fierce red eyes and sharp teeth and wings that screamed like a hurricane. And he was a terrible thing, because he was alone.”

“Did he kill people?” Una is already intrigued. “Did he eat them?”

“Ssh,” Sigrid clasps the other girl’s hand, looking up at Loki pensively. She already guesses where he’s going with this, he thinks. Of all of them, she reads him the best.

“He did once, yes,” he answers. “But then he learned what it feels like to lose someone important to you, and he decided...he decided to be more careful with his power, to destroy those who deserved it without mercy, but to spare the innocent when he could.”

Una was really looking for gore, and seems disappointed, but she nods her understanding.

“But this story is not so much about the giant, as about his children,” Loki goes on. “There was a great flood in the village near his cave one autumn, and the frothing, raging waters brought debris past his fishing spot. In the wreck of the houses that washed past there were many dead bodies, whole families broken and taken into the deep dark water. But there was also a little coracle with four children inside, clinging in terror to one another. Two girls, and two boys.”

Sigrid takes Agnarr’s hand in her free one, holding onto it reassuringly. He smiles a little and squeezes hers in return.

“Well, he was a monster, but he did not wish to harm innocent children, or even to leave them be to fend for themselves. He pulled the boat in to shore and took them into his cave, dried them off, wrapped them in warm skins and furs, and fed them fish and the roots of cattails, and berries from the wild wood. And they began to grow strong again.”

“He kept them over the winter, caring for them as best he could, and perhaps there would have been better guardians in the world, but none of them came to take the children from him, for the roads were impassable with snow. So the giant grew to love the children dearly, and they him.”

“In the spring, when they were able to travel the roads, he carried them back to the village they came from, to see if they still had family there, cousins perhaps, that would love them as he did.”

All the children are quiet now, rapt. All of them aware the story he is telling is about them.

“It is strange how things change with even a little bit of time,” he says. “There are stories of great warriors abducted by elves, wined and dined and adored for a time, and then allowed to return to their own world only to find centuries have passed there, when their time in the magical realms seemed to them to have lasted only a few nights. The children felt that way when they walked into the village and looked around. Buildings that had been flattened had been rebuilt. There were new homes, new gardens, and while many people were missing and many monuments had been built in memory of the dead, there were new babies, as well, and lambs and ducklings and kittens in the yards.”

“The village had grown without them, and they were not sure where they belonged in it.”

Agnarr looks down and worries his lip, then raises his hands and makes some of the signs he has been taught: They belong with the giant now.

Bless the boy. Loki smiles at him gently. “Perhaps so. The giant, though, mourned for what they had lost, and what his care had cost them. A safe home, a cozier world than his wild caves. Time, he knew, would continue to make the village grow, and the children would grow as well, further and further apart from the home that was once theirs.”

He pauses a moment to collect words, and they wait for him.

“I have doomed you to my fate,” he says at length. “To be a monster’s children is almost the same as being a monster yourselves. You will watch the warm hearth from a distance; you will run wild in the woods and fields; the voices of the wind and the fire will be yours, but peace as you know it, the peace of a small home and a simple path, will not be for you. Forgive me, little ones, because I meant to give you my best, but even my best comes with a price.”

“Then we’ll pay it,” Una speaks up decisively. “I mean...the children. In the story. I bet they said that. I bet they are brave enough.”

“They were very brave, strong children,” he says softly. “And they had one another, as well.”

Sigrid knows better than most what it means to be a child of Loki. Already, she’s watched the kulning call and seen the Hunt ride; she has sat at his side as he wove seidr in the sky; she has smiled into the ruby eyes of the Jotun face he wears in the chill. She’s quiet for a moment, looking at the others, and then she leans in against his side, pulling Eindrid into an embrace.

“We’ll take care of each other,” she promises. “Always and forever.”

The children in the story, signs Agnarr. Did they live happily?

“They went through many things,” he says. “Many challenges, of sorts they never expected. They walked the line between the tame and the wild, the sacred and the unholy, in the footsteps of the giant. But there are gifts to be found in útangarðr as well as challenges, and he was ready to teach them all he knew, as was befitting for his children.”

He could not have spoken any clearer words of adoption. Paperwork might come later, formalization, an addition of his name to their own. But this, they would remember years from now, was the moment they all knew who belonged with whom. The moment they became the sons and daughters of Loki.

“I want to learn everything,” Una says, and Sigrid nods. Agnarr, often shy of touch, puts his head on Loki’s shoulder and makes a whispery noise in his throat, a barely-audible sound of agreement.

Loki smooths Eindrid’s hair and looks down at him. The toddler is sucking his thumb, but his eyes are big and alert, and he smiles at Loki.

“Well, then,” Loki says. “Let us begin.”

Mari Lwyd, Horse of Frost, Star-horse, and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.
The Dead return.
Those Exiles carry her, they who seem holy and have put on corruption, they who seem corrupt and have put on holiness.
They strain against the door.
They strain towards the fire which fosters and warms the Living.

V. Watkins, Ballad of the Mari Lwyd.

----

A group of four children in masks and bells and colorful clothing roams the Nexus today, tumbling and giggling and unorganized. Those who know Loki’s wards may recognize them by stature or voice or accent. Agnarr, the tallest, is silent as usual, but he has a riot of bright ribbons braided into his hair. He carries Eindrid on his back, the smaller boy waving chubby fists around so that the bells on his wrists jingle. Una is all over the place, as per her usual, yelling greetings and playful challenges and tossing snowballs at signs, tree branches, and individuals who seem receptive.

But where is Loki? Well, the answer to that would seem to tie into Sigrid’s position. She is as giggly and keyed up as the others, but she follows last, leading a strange figure under a tattered shroud. The shape is like nothing so much as a tall, lean person hunched over nearly double, bearing a pole which is attached to the shroud. At the end of the pole is a head made of wood or papier mache, horselike but stylized and strange, almost skeletal. The eyes are round and huge, made of glass: one blue, one red. Ribbons and bells and greenery decorate the head, and the jaw moves and snaps, evidently at the will of whoever is under the shroud. There’s a curled velvet ribbon in the mouth, in lieu of a tongue.

The obvious assumption, for those who know the children, is that Loki is operating the hooden horse puppet, but if anyone dares to tug the shroud aside and look, they will see nothing but shadow and fabric. But they will hear his laughter, bright and unmistakeable.

The children and their horse knock on doors indiscriminately. Residences, hotels, businesses. Loki leaves it up to the kids to choose where to go, and where to sing. The song always begins the same, translated by the magic of the Nexus:

Well here we come calling in innocent amity
To ask your leave
To ask your leave
To ask your leave to sing to thee!

(Will you let them in? Or will you argue?)

A sung response will receive a song in answer, and it may turn into a sort of battle of improvised carols. The children are clever, but only children, and sometimes the Horse will take over, singing with a familiar baritone.

If turned away, they will leave without a show of disappointment or complaint, but the snow will be scuffed where they go, in the shape of horseshoe prints. The tracks will not fade for hours.

If allowed inside, a scene will ensue, with the children being very much children, playing inside the home. The horse will snap its jaws at the occupants (though none will actually be bitten), and may give chase. And Sigrid or Agnarr will follow, eventually grabbing the shroud to tame the creature once more.

Anyone who plays along will receive a flurry of childish hugs and kisses when they leave, and may find candy, nuts, oranges or apples, in pockets or tucked in out of the way corners of their home.

---

Evening comes. The sun goes down early, and the temperatures plunge. That is none of Loki’s doing, of course. He does not cause weather, not like his brother who calls the lightning. Not like the Spirits who call the seasons. But he thrives in this time of year, this climate.

The children are tired after running about all afternoon with the hooden horse. They’re full of sweets and good food, and the lightest spin of his seiðr will help them sleep deeply. Mrs. Hedgeworthy, their housekeeper, will be watching them; no one is to venture outdoors tonight.

Sigrid is the last to go to bed; his little blue icicle. Normally, he is careful not to favor her, but she is the oldest girl, and the most likely to follow her adopted parent’s footsteps.

“When Una is older, I will show her this as well,” he says, and takes her by the hand. Even as she touches him, his form shifts and blurs, angles softening to curves. Sigrid smiles up at Loki; the children are used to seeing their guardian in both masculine and feminine forms by now.

Loki-the-Princess picks up the little girl and carries her outdoors. There is no moon tonight, not yet, and the purple darkness is heavy on the snow. Facing across the meadows, Loki draws her spine up, fills her lungs and calls.

The notes are eerie, wild and bittersweet. Kulning, this is, but no mere herding-cry to summon the cattle home. It’s a song to the wind, to the ice, to the quaking heart of the earth beneath their feet, to the shimmer of the night overhead. There are no words discernable, only a high, keening glissando; long notes with a sharp rise and a glottal stop in the offset. The sound echoes across the meadow.

Elsewhere in the Nexus, residents will hear the kulning cries hi-i ri-i oh! oh, hi oh! Some may find them alluring, a siren song. Others may be unnerved by the nameless voice at dusk. The unusually alert and prescient may consider the nature of the call, may know what walks abroad at this time of year, and may choose to slip away to avoid finding out what answers.

Carried safely back inside, tucked in bed, Sigrid watches the dark sky through her window, waiting for the aurora to respond to Loki’s song, but she’s asleep before the wind changes and the hoofbeats begin to drum against the ground.

--

Loki does not dare to allow herself the luxury of sentiment. Before the ride, she casts a spell on herself, blinding her ability to recognize the faces of those she knows. Thor will be the only exception, and he is also the only one to receive an advance warning--or an invitation.

The Odensjakt rides tonight, brother. Reads the text that comes to his PINpoint in the early afternoon. In honor of the season, and of the dead of Asgard--who will ride with me. You might be well served to stay away, but if you choose to join us, meet me in the meadow.

It would be good to have Thor along on the ride. But Loki would rather not surprise him with the familiar faces that will join the Hunt. He is still mourning many of them.

The winds pick up as the night deepens. Perhaps that is the source of the hoof-beat sounds? Or is the ride the source of the wind tonight?

---

It is almost midnight. There is a screaming across the sky, a rumble that drums the ground below, like the warning of an approaching avalanche.

The Wild Hunt rides, rushing around the outskirts of the Plaza as if in memory of the torches of last season, then ducking aside and plunging through the main streets of town. The riders move as one, a flood of bodies dark and ghostly-pale, horses and riders, dogs and deer and hunters all rushing together. The animals have red eyes and red mouths, and the air steams from their mouths as they pant and bellow. The riders are harder to read, faces tranquil or focused, dreamy or laughing, sometimes even screaming battle-cries. At the head of the procession is Loki.

Sometimes she appears as a woman, pale and green-eyed, with skirts and hair flying behind her as she rides. Other times, he is as a man--or more accurately, as a Jotun--red-eyed and dark, chest bare in the frigid night. Either way this is Loki, and the twin-horned helmet stays as a fixture.

The Hunt surges through the streets, overturning garbage cans and cars, knocking lightposts askew, cracking windows. If they choose to enter a place, there will be damage left in their wake. Things broken, pipes frozen, food and liquor missing. But these are not mere thieves or vandals. They will never leave a place uninhabitable, nor will they take all they find there. Just enough to frighten. Enough to inconvenience.

Here, tonight, a plan Loki set into motion a long while ago comes to fruition, though not at all in the way he intended. Tonight, the ghosts of the Statesman ride at his side, and so, too, does Skurge. Loki originally made a passage from Hel to the Nexus with the intent to later rally the dead to fight Thanos in some way. His plans remained unformed until they became somewhat less relevant. In some worlds, there may still be chances to oppose the Titan’s attacks and their aftereffects, but now, this is a different game. A simpler game. A display of the thinness of the walls between worlds both living, and dead, and in-between.

The ghosts of the Aesir will be joined, no doubt, by others. Living monsters and dead ones, witches and wizards and psychics, may feel the call and follow of their own volition. Others may find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and be snatched up in passing, by cold, ghostly hands.

No real harm will come, no injury that cannot be eased with an aspirin and a bath in epsom salts the next day, but the ride will be rough and disorienting for these unsuspecting conscripts, their ears will ring with the spectral cries, and they will find themselves dropped off far from where they were found, dumped unceremoniously onto the sidewalk in an odd corner of the Plaza.

They will have to find their own way home from there.
---

Like all things, the revelry of the Hunt must end. When the night begins to turn toward dawn, the surge of ghosts and their leader return to the meadow where their ride began. Those that joined them voluntarily peel away and head wherever best suits them, for a rest. Loki dismounts the steed she rode lightly, bare feet sinking into the snow but melting it not a whit. She smiles up at the dead as they begin to depart, some riding away, others fading in place.

What these spirits think of her, she knows not. She invited them, and they came, perhaps more for the honor of the hunt than for fondness of Loki. As much as she may have done for redemption in the eyes of her people, they are not obligated to forgive or understand. But they did come, and some will come again.

Skurge is the last to leave, lingering on horseback where he is, with words or questions on the tip of his incorporeal tongue.

But he was never good with words, and after a moment he just says, “Be seeing you.”

Loki smiles and gives him a gracious bow of her head. “Soon, I hope.”

He does not answer, but the look on his face as he vanishes says: Yeah. Probably.

--

As the sky grows bright once more, another kulning call echoes across the empty space of the meadow. This one is a farewell, a gentle send-off; to ears that do not understand, it sounds no less eerie.

The Odensjakt will ride again, after all. Soon.


------
OOC notes

[[This is an open post with a twist. I cannot commit to long threads, but I wanted to make this available for people who wanted to have interactions with the hooden horse/Mari Lywd or the Wild Hunt.

Please feel free to tag in with your character(s) reaction to any of the above. They can encounter the children, they could hear the sounds of the Hunt, or for a more lol-like experience, they could join or be caught up in the Hunt themselves.

Two things should be noted. First: Loki will not recognize any character except Thor, potentially not even his own alternates. He did that on purpose so his fondness for certain individuals cannot get in the way of his plans. If you get close to the Hunt, even if you’re on good terms with him and don’t wanna go, you’re coming along. Feel free to yell at him later. He may or may not be remorseful, but probably not.

Second: People who either join the Hunt voluntarily or gain control after being snatched up are essentially invited to participate. Feel free to smash some stuff up, steal food or drink in small amounts, etc. However, the Hunt’s purpose is not to kill or maim, but to frighten and disrupt. Anyone who gets too violent or otherwise overly enthusiastic risks falling out of synch with the rest of the Hunt. If that happens, the character may be yeeted out of the group and find themselves in a corner of the Plaza they didn’t start out in.

For each tag-in, I will respond with at least one prose-heavy tag detailing what the character is likely to have seen, felt, or experienced in the Hunt or during the visit with the hooden horse. These responses will probably be slow in coming, but you know, that’s the holidays for you.

Some things might get threaded out, too, it just sort of depends on whether my time and energy permit and how hard something hits me, inspiration-wise. Please don’t feel bad if I only respond to you once! Also, you are welcome to handwave that your character got dragged into this madness without tagging in, if you so choose.]]

It sounds almost like a whim, when Loki finally asks Harley to teach him how to dance in the air. It’s not. It’s something he’s spent a long time contemplating, unwilling to intrude on something she holds so dear.

He’s starting to realize he’s not an intrusion.

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced to crown
I was a heavy heart to carry
My feet dragged across the ground
And he took me to the river
Where he slowly let me drown

He finds he can’t bear performing with the aerial silks, as beautiful as they are. Harley demonstrates, patiently, over and over and he imitates the basic moves well enough, but when it comes to motion, putting them together, the way the fabric tightens around his limbs, the way he has to permit his body a split second of free-fall, the way some poses make blood rush to his head--it’s too much. There are too many dark memories attached to these bodily sensations, and he cannot hide the flickers of panic.

Harley deserves better than to see him like that. After the fourth or fifth time he has to stop to sit on the floor, forehead on his knees as he catches his breath and calms the trembling, he knows he can’t keep on with this activity. Not now. Maybe in a few years, decades, centuries. Everything now is too raw.

My love has concrete feet
My love’s an iron ball
Wrapped around your ankles
Over the waterfall

I’m so heavy, heavy in your arms...

She holds his hand in hers and feels him shiver without judgment. Murmurs, “I’ll always catch you if you fall, Princess,” and he knows she means it. It makes his heart warm, and the lesson dissolves easily into cuddling and kisses and then something that involves silk sheets on a mattress rather than in the air.

I’m so heavy, heavy in your arms...

He hates that he’s vulnerable at all, but he’s beginning to accept that she doesn’t.

This will be my last confession,
‘I love you’ never felt like any blessing
Whispering like it’s a secret
Uttered to condemn the one who hears it
With a heavy heart

It’s probably foolish of him to try the lyra ring when she’s not around. He may fall and hurt himself, and he may panic, but Loki still struggles to overcome his pride, and he thinks he’d rather face either without Harley as his audience, at least this once.

It’s easier. Without the silk binding him, he feels safer. Without it obscuring his vision he can see there are only a few feet to fall, not a pitch-black abyss awaiting him. When he swings upside-down, the lurch of blood rushing to his head is uncomfortable, but he is free to change position easily, or to let go and drop.

He thinks he understands how it might feel for her, after he’s experimented some. The preternatural strength and grace she possesses is something he, too, can muster, though he has nothing close to her skill and comfort level with the equipment. He can see how this is a kind of magic. How it might feel almost like flight.

He likes the way the ring spins in the air.

He finds he can weave little strands of seidr around it, leaving it gleaming as it turns, setting motes of light dancing on the walls.

There’s music playing when she comes looking for him. He’s curled perfectly within the curve of the ring, spinning slowly amidst the dancing green aurora. It’s hard to tell in the eerie light whether he’s been crying or whether he’s just gleaming with in the magical light, but he crooks his knees around the edge of the ring and swings down lightly, comfortable on the equipment for the first time, comfortable in his own skin.

When he reaches out and she takes his hand, they are weightless.

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around her neck
My fingers laced to crown
I was a heavy heart to carry
But she never let me down
When she held me in her arms, my feet never touched the ground.

It goes ill with Thor. Loki knows that without asking; he can almost taste the despair on him, even when he smiles. He is still the brother he knew, and more--he is the brother Loki wanted. One who accepts him, as close to unconditionally as anyone could. But he is wounded, and Loki fears, time and again, that this wound will prove fatal.

It makes him think of the Thor of his own world. His brother. He spoke to him once, in the Winter, reaching through the hundreds of veils between worlds to touch him one last time. He was not well then; still, his pain was quieter, a swollen fracture rather than a gaping, bleeding wound, and Loki was focused on his own doings.

Any wound can fester.

He should not take this chance, not when so much depends on him here, but he needs to know, he needs to, and so he finds the tree once again, the dead thing he marked with ice in the winter on the edge of the Wilds. It’s fallen, now, but he can still see the sear on the bark, and a dark stain where the eye was, and he kneels beside it, then stretches out, resting his back against it and tilting his chin toward the sky.

There is pain, first. A sizzle of lightning, a wash of ash, the smell of smoke. There is no sun. He promised the sun would shine on them again; a lie in a long series of lies, and perhaps the worst he ever told. He thought he bore the brunt of that, being as he was the one that died, but now he fears he was wrong.

It’s dark, and there is no sun, no moon. The stars are burned out. Has an even worse apocalypse befallen the people of this world? Is everything dead?

No. Gradually the murk resolves into vague, senseless shapes around him, and he realizes, he remembers. The last time he spoke to Thor, in his dreams, he was inside his mind. That is where he is now, as well. A hopeless place, choked with dust, flooded with guilt and loss, and something else. Drink? Drugs? Loki cannot tell. It’s too dark.

It’s too dark, dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,

And dark the sun and moon, and--

"Brother, Thor, can you hear me?"

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.

But Thor was always so full of light. Unquenchable. "Thor, hear me. Thor! Wake up, Brother please!"

It’s as dark as the Void between the Stars, but when he calls out, a wave of something rolls through the floating, smothering dust. A ripple, a wash, a tsunami of raw grief. It’s too big. The mind of a god untethered, untended, is a danger, even for another god. Even for his brother. Loki is terrified.

"Brother, please!"

An instant later he feels himself slammed back into his own body. Green eyes fly open to stare at the sky above. It’s bright and blue, so blue, and it’s an insult, a fucking mockery, it should not be allowed.

He doesn’t know whether Thor recognized what was happening and pushed him back on purpose, or whether it was a mere instinctive reaction based on the interactions of their emotional states. He may never know. But he is beyond shaken.

The beautiful spring around him is a threat. The sky tilts and looks greenish, clouded with fine particles. Loki knows, he knows this is the Nexus, he knows he is safe but he can’t breathe. There’s pressure on his chest, guilt and self-hatred pushing him down into the rotted wood of the trunk beneath him, and he’s being throttled, the life choked out of him on the very ground, here where a magical field is supposed to prevent violence.

There is no Thanos. He cannot see any attacker, but still he struggles for air. He claws at his throat like a man having a seizure, tearing at his own skin and the collar of his tunic, but finding no purchase. He gasps, writhes. Something wet slides down his cheeks.

Beneath him, the ground trembles. Above him, the wind cries out the fear his voice cannot. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, or why, only knows desperation.

And the earth shakes. The rotten wood kindles, flares, and collapses around him, and he--is that smoke or
the dust the

sky seems to fade a little and turn amber and

His heart he
Dark
It’s dark too dark...

He’s not sure how long he’s unconscious, but the sky is deepening to cobalt when he starts to come to, shaking so hard he can’t sit up. The ground still shudders beneath him.

He gathers his arms up around his head to hide from the blessed Jotun blue of the twilight sky, and sobs.