Standing at the very edge of the Bifrost, Loki takes one more step backwards – the last step. He feels his heel tilt back over the rainbow bridge's icy edge, feels the air stretch out behind him. The Bifrost stretches out through the liminal space between worlds, and the air is too thin here for Loki to Skywalk upon it, as he has walked between so many worlds in his time. Wind whistles about his head, flicking his hair into his face and around his ears, but Loki knows the wind is unnatural, brought about by Thor's stormy tempers alone – with all that power rushing back into him, all at once, he might take a few days to recall his self-control.

"Loki!" Thor says, his voice low and hoarse from shouting. He had shouted so much when Loki had slipped his restraints and fled down the corridor.

"Loki! Loki, you cannot flee this punishment, not this time!" Oh, how Loki's feet pound upon the marble floors of the palace, paintings, murals, golden walls speed by on his left and on his right: oh, how Loki's heart pounds. "Where are you going to go!?" Thor's voice is grizzled and angry.

Loki lacks an answer. He runs and he runs, with palace guards and Thor himself giving chase, until his feet are pounding upon the crystalline surface of the Bifrost, and not upon Asgard's ground.

"Loki," Thor whispers. He comes closer, but he stops with little more than thirty feet between them, apparently scared to come any closer in case he pressures Loki into falling. Thor's rounded cheeks are red with exertion, and there are circles beneath his eyes – had he slept much upon Midgard, Loki wonders? In the arms of his mundane woman, in his mundane bed, in his mundane world? "Loki, this is no time for your foolish temper tantrums – you caused me to fall, and then you—"

"I caused you…?" Loki repeats. He smiles: the expression is wan. Around him, on every side, he sees stars that he has not known"What a curious reimagining of events."

"You refused to return me to Asgard," Thor continues. "Why, brother? You truly hated me so?"

"Hated you? Never. I hated only the life I was forced to lead." Loki brings his other foot back: now, he teeters on the very edge of nothingness, both heels off the bridge now. He feels the insecurity of his position, the proximity of his final fall. How many times has Loki tried? How many times has he tried to prove his readiness for the throne, tried to abide by his father's rule, tried to be like Thor?

Enough times.

"Loki," Thor murmurs. He says Loki's name with so much passion, with so much feeling. Can he really mean it? "You will be forgiven."

"I have never been forgiven," Loki says. "For anything I have ever done. Not truly. Do you know what I want, Thor? What I truly want?"

"Power."

"Power," Loki repeats, and lets out a laugh. "Have you ever thought about why?" How could he have ever believed Asgard might be his? Particularly now with Thor's return, and with the knowledge of his own tainted blood… And who might he pass this legacy onto? Loki thinks of Hel, condemned to the underworld; of Fenrir savage in his chains; of Angrboðr encircling the wide world; of Narfi and Valí, one having devoured the other at the cruel hands of Odin; and worst of all, of Sleipnir, born of his youthful folly in tempting the stallion Svaðilfari. All of Loki's children, all lost to him in one way or another.

"Loki—"

He tips back, and feels himself fall. There is no air here in the thin place between realms, and without it, he falls all the faster. He feels his seiðr coil around his body, changing inside him, frothing in his veins, and it forms a cloud about him – a cloud to hide him from Heimdall's All-Seeing gaze, just until he might be able to secrete himself.

He falls, and he falls, and he replays memories in his mind.

Laufey turns as Loki comes up behind him, his blade raised. Laufey's hand is tight around Loki's throat, and he wheezes out a sound, bringing the blade up and through the blue flesh of Laufey's forearm. It is nothing like any of the hundreds of battles Loki has taken to in his years: Laufey is so much faster than any other man or woman Loki has ever faced.

He twists the knife, and Laufey hisses his pain.

It is the worst parody of a dance, each of their movements matched, step for step, dodge for dodge, and Laufey's own blade comes closer and closer to Loki's throat. Gasping, Loki twists his knife free and just misses plunging it into his father's – his father's! – belly.

Laufey chokes, going still, and Loki stares, his lips parted, his eyes wide, at the spearhead that passes from the back of Laufey's neck and comes from his mouth, bloodied and wet with red.

Loki stares at Odin as Laufey drops to his knees, the spear Gungir, that Loki had obtained so many centuries ago from the Dwarves of Svartalheim, comes away from Laufey's mouth. "Father," Loki whispers, and he dashes forwards, taking Odin's frail arm and keeping him from tumbling to the ground. Odin is pale and still dazed from the Allsleep, and Loki must take care to prevent him from falling.

"Mother!" he calls over his shoulder, and he lifts his father at his shoulders and his knees, taking him to a chaise long in the corner of the room. It sickens him to see his father so pale and drawn, and even touching him makes Loki's skin crawl, particularly with how much weight his father has lost.

Loki's head is spinning. He is gasping for air that is not there, and he closes his eyes as tightly as he can, gritting his white teeth together. Seiðr burns hot in his veins, and he feels himself let out a yell of pain as it grows yet hotter, hotter – he is burning! He is burning, becoming a conflagration, and this is how he shall die!

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

"Tony," JARVIS says, and Tony furrows his brow, setting his spanner aside and pulling himself out from under the car. The skateboard rolls easily, but the damned thing is Hell on his back – he'd absolutely shattered his creeper in an unfortunate landing a few weeks back, and he has to wonder if he's ever going to get the hang of the damned suit.

"Yeah, what is it?" Tony asks, pulling himself up with a soft sound of pain. The Bentley can get fucked – he'll fix it tomorrow. Rolling his shoulders and doing his best to ignore their soft clicks, he looks up at the screen JARVIS is showing him. The picture is a little grainy, but he can see something bright flash across the atmosphere and then hit the ground. "Shit, what is that? A comet?"

"It hasn't left a crater, sir. I only show it to you because it narrowly brushed one of our satellites, whatever it is." JARVIS has some information flash over the screen: the thick snow bank the comet had landed in is somewhere in Norway, up in the woods with no nearby cameras or even villages or towns.

"Huh," Tony mutters, putting forwards his hands and adjusting the image on the screen – zooming in is no good, but he can get a good enough look at the thing from when it passed by the satellite. Pretty standard piece of space rock, it looks like – brown-black and absolutely thick with ice. "I guess some agency will go have a look at it?"

"SWORD seems to have deployed not moments ago, sir," JARVIS says mildly. On a secondary screen, up pops a picture of Abigail Brand, the head of the organisation. She's shacking up, Tony hears, with Hank McCoy from the X-Men – and good on that guy, honestly. The two of them are made for each other.

"Lemme know if anything seems up with it," Tony says, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm gonna head up to bed, big guy."

"Good night, sir," JARVIS says, and the lights flicker off behind him as Tony ascends the stairs and exits the lab. He freezes on the bottom stair, and grins.

"JARVIS!" he calls over his shoulder, popping his head through the door. "One more thing."

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

"Any biosigns?" a woman's voice calls over the assembled team. The woman is tall, broad-shouldered and strapping, with thick green hair cascading in waves over her shoulders: despite the dark, cold night, she wears thick glasses that shade her eyes. Her team manoeuvres well, covering the ground in careful lines to ensure they have missed no shrapnel or pieces that have come away from the heavy block of ice left in the snow.

Settled upon the thick branch of a spruce, Loki looks down at them as they bustle beneath him, and doublechecks his working. The ice had formed around him in a tight encasement as he had fallen through the atmosphere and onto the planet below, moving at obscene speed: his seiðr had acted of its own accord, heating his blood and ensuring his impact was not so great as to dash open his skull: falling from the Bifrost is very different indeed to travelling through it. He had broken from the ice and then froze it once more, ensuring there was no strangely man-shaped hollow within it and making sure he had left no scrap of fabric, skin or thread of hair: he had reached out, then, doing his best to accustom himself with his surroundings, but found himself unable to recognize them.

Now, planted as he is in a tree, he attempts to think it through. He is on Midgard, certainly, but he is aware that there are a great many nations upon this planet, each with their own particularities, and he has no wish to show himself for the alien he is. Loki believes himself to be somewhere on the Northern part of the planet, and in a place with thick snow… Perhaps he ought follow this crew of cadets, and see what they might know, or to brave the wilderness and merely walk until he finds somewhere suitable—

"Hey! What's that!?" Loki's head whips to the side, following the voice of the young man in a heavy uniform. There is a heavy crunch of snow as something lands. There is a short pause, and then Loki hears a sound like a trumpet call, followed by a loud pop and a burst of something papery landing on the ground.

"Uh, seems like a giftbox, Ma'am," the boy answers. Loki watches the captain stand over the box, which reads in bright, shining letters: WELCOME TO NORWAY, ABIGAIL BRAND. BYOB (BRING YOUR OWN BEAST), and seems to contain a bottle of alcohol. In smaller letters, at the base of the page, it reads, love from tony stark xoxo. Frowning deeply, he leans forwards, trying to puzzle this out, but Brand removes her sunglasses and heavily rolls her eyes.

"Stark," she mutters, shaking her head. "Pick up the ice shards and let's roll out! There's nothing fun for us here." She kicks the box away, and within twenty minutes, the whole team have packed into their motor vehicles and driven away.

Loki can be patient. He allows himself an hour before he drops down from his place in the trees and examines the box. It had dropped from above by a parachute, seemingly dropped by some manner of drone – there is a scent of petroleum clinging to the box, very faint, and Loki tastes it upon his tongue. The box contains only its poster card and the bottle, which declares itself to be The Famous Grouse.

Shrugging, Loki unscrews the cap and takes a sip. It's whiskey, blended well, and although it isn't very strong in comparison to Asgardian ales, he knows if he drinks the whole thing, well… He might be on his way to a pleasant buzz.

Turning, he regards the woods stretching out on his every side, barely lit by the soft light from the stars above. Loki looks up at them, counts them in their shining thousands, and looks at those he would follow to return to Asgard, were he to abandon this folly, were he to Skywalk there. It might take him months, but he could return home, to his own bed—

And to his own punishment.

Swigging from the bottle, Loki begins walking south, and spreads his seiðr about him like a net and searching for people. He finds none. After a while, he crosses an empty road: the scent of petroleum lingers here, too, and it seems to him that cars must pass to and fro, but how often he knows not.

Below him, down the hill, there is a wide-reaching lake: it reminds him of a looking glass his mother had once used, and he smiles. He will sit before this shimmering lake and use it for his reflection: he cannot go about in his current form, after all. Midgard might not know what he looks like, but he couldn't possibly risk Thor or some other coming in search of him.

Pausing, he looks up at the sky. There are stars here that he hasn't seen for hundreds of years, so different is this sky to his own on Asgard, or the skies of any number of planets Loki has visited in his thousand years of travelling the universe at large. Why did he always feel the need to return, he wonders, to Asgard? Could he truly have believed he had a chance at the throne once?

Gas particles are colliding in the air far above his head, and they form the most beautiful lights in the sky. He has seen this phenomenon on Asgard, but the way it appears here, upon Midgard, is very different to the way he has seen it before: there are so many more colours, perhaps as a result of their single sun, or some other facet to the Midgardian atmosphere Loki does not yet know.

He can no longer attempt a throne, but perhaps he might attempt happiness. He will settle on Midgard for a time, just until he has a plan to move elsewhere – numerous planets desire change, desire magic, desire a god. He will find somewhere he fits.

Loki sets off down the hill, toward the lake, and toward his coming rebirth.

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Combing out his hair, Loki kneels in the comforting cool of the snow, and he looks at his reflection in the water. Sitting on an outcrop of the ice, entirely nude and still wet from his swim, Loki looks at his reflection, wondering what to change about his appearance first. His hair, thick and dark and glossy, has always set him apart from his family: in homage, perhaps, he might look more like his mother. Beneath the movement of the pads of his fingers, he watches the black strands soften to a straw-like blond, shortening and becoming a little wavier, curlier. His body thins: he lets himself become a little shorter, but less broad of the shoulder. Then, his face…

Loki drinks from the bottle, and then leans closer to the water. This ritual is one Loki has undergone a thousand times before – more than a mere illusion, this transformation involves the physical change of his body, piece by piece. He shall take on his new form for some time to come, but the process takes its toll, and he will not be able to perform huge feats of magic for some time to come.

He squeezes his chin, bringing in the bone and hardening his jawline. His face is thinner now, and his nose is sharper, pointier. Perhaps lighter eyes? Yes, that works quite wonderfully, a soft periwinkle blue – very fetching, to match his lighter eyebrows. Perhaps even a beard? Ah. Loki frowns at the thick hair on his cheeks and chin and lip, and retracts it some. Yes, that works rather nicely: a much thinner beard, enough to prove he can grow one, but not messy.

Looking at his new reflection, Loki smiles. Adjusts his teeth a little. Smiles wider.

"Guri… Hei! Hei du!" Turning his head, Loki raises his chin, looking behind him. The road he had thought deserted now has an automobile placed upon it, and two elderly men are approaching.

"Ja?" Loki feels himself responding, the Allspeak working its magic in his veins. "Kan jeg hjelpe deg?" The two men mutter amongst themselves, and Loki stands from the snow. It takes a few moments for the language to settle itself fully in his head and on his tongue, but he tastes it in its entirety now – this must be the Norwegian language. "You oughtn't step too far out! I'm some way out upon the ice."

"You must be mad!" one of the old men says sharply. "You have on no clothes!" Blinking, Loki looks to the blanket of snow he had comfortably knelt upon: his clothes he had already vanished, ready to replace them with something new once his new body was complete.

"Ah, yes. I do have them – I merely left them in the woods." This excuse seems to do him no good. "I have this!" He holds up his bottle of whiskey.

"You have hypothermia," the younger of the men says, coming closer. He does not have Loki's magic to steady himself on the ice, and slips, falling down on his back. Loki steps gracefully toward him, and, supporting him with strong arms, pulls the man to his feet.

"Hypothermia?" Loki repeats. "What is this?"

"Sven," the younger man says. "Get a blanket from the car." Holding tightly to Loki's arm, this stranger leads Loki away from the lake, and Loki looks at him with undisguised interest. "He does not feel so cold, but I don't know… He must be mad."

"I can hear you," Loki says, with some mild distaste, but he lets the younger man pull him forwards. His gloves are not upon his hands, but are attached to the cuffs of his thick coat with some sort of strap – it's a rather clever idea, and it distracts Loki as the older man – Sven – grabs a blanket and wraps him in it.

"Do you know where you are?" Sven asks. He has white hair that is thinning on the very top of his head, paired with a prominent nose and eyes that are a frothy sea-green. How old is he, Loki wonders, in human years? Seventy? Eighty?

"Norway," Loki says, confidently. Sven releases a scoff of sound, and Loki frowns at him, feeling the thickness of the blanket upon his shoulders.

"Bjørn, get him into the car. Sit close to him, get him warm." Bjørn is younger than the other man, though they have the same prominent nose and softly coloured eyes: Bjørn's hair is still a deep blond, although it is swiftly giving way to silver hairs, and his eyebrows are white already.

"Oh, please do," Loki murmurs, grinning and showing his new teeth. Bjørn seems undeterred by Loki's flirtation, and Loki allows himself to be manhandled into the back of their car. Involuntarily, Loki lets out a soft sound of surprise at the heady warmth that hits him as he is pushed back upon the backseat: they have an internal heater for this automobile, and the heat settles suddenly upon his skin. All his life, Loki has preferred the cold to the summer warmth of Asgard: it is only fitting that he has learned so late the reason. Thinking of Laufey's body, abandoned in the palace of Asgard, he feels his brow furrow.

"What is your name?" Sven asks as he slides into the driver's seat.

"Loki," he says. Sven furrows his light eyebrows, and Loki watches him share an uncertain look with Bjørn in the mirror.

"That isn't a very common name," Sven says. Loki shrugs his shoulders, watching with detached curiosity as Bjørn reaches over him and takes a black strap from beside him, buckling it against the seat. Loki smiles at Bjørn, who responds by placing two fingers to Loki's neck and feeling for his pulse. Loki had softened his flesh, taking away the Asgardian density of skin and muscle and making himself feel more human to those who might touch him. "Your parents eccentric?"

"Oh, yes," Loki says mildly. "Where are we?"

"Norway," Bjørn says. Loki laughs, reaching up and placing his fingers slowly around Bjørn's wrist: he doesn't attempt to pull the other man's hand away, but merely feels the pleasant warmth of his flesh beneath his fingers. Bjørn looks like Sven, but while Sven is some ways into old age, Bjørn is only in the latter stages of his middle age. "We are outside Nerskogen. You were swimming in Granasjøen lake."

"It was very temperate."

"It is minus eight degrees outside," Bjørn says, bluntly. He reminds Loki of Hogun, and Loki feels himself smile despite the situation.

"I don't mind the cold," Loki replies. "Where are you taking me?"

"Into town," Sven says. "We will take you home with us. Treat you… How is his pulse?"

"Normal, Fatter," Bjørn says quietly. "He is a little wet, but he isn't outside normal temperature… He cannot have been out there for too long. Doesn't explain his confusion. What happened to you? Do you remember getting out of bed this morning? Take me through what happened." As he speaks, Bjørn's hand touches Loki's chin very gently, and he shines a light in Loki's eyes: Loki lets out a sound of complaint, leaning away, but Bjørn scowls at him and holds his chin a little harder.

"You have cold hands," Loki says, his fingers still loosely entwined around Bjørn's wrist. It seems to take some concentration to keep his fingers looped: the fatigue of his fall, and all the seiðr he has used, is beginning to weigh heavily upon him. "Are you a healer?"

"I am a doctor, yes," Bjørn says. "I was a paediatrician."

"What is that?"

"A doctor who treats children," Sven supplies from the driver's seat. "Thus his ease in examining you." Loki laughs at the insult, and he lets Bjørn shine his small torch into his eyes. It is to examine, Loki imagines, the dilation and contraction of his pupils, though to what end, Loki knows not. When Loki must deliver medical treatment to an individual, he reaches out with his seiðr, examines them internally before healing what damage he can – the way these Midgardians might diagnose their ills is a curious consideration.

"Do you remember getting out of bed this morning?" Bjørn repeats, and Loki nods his head.

"Yes. But I took a fall… A long fall. I was in the forest."

"In the national park? Were you in Trollheimen?"

"Yes," Loki assents, comfortably feeling out his way. Bjørn frowns, and shares a glance with Sven once more – it is strange, Loki thinks, how entirely at ease he feels within the confines of this automobile, with these two strangers on his either side. Perhaps it is the mild effect of the alcohol, or perhaps it is the fatigue at having fallen and now changed his very physicality, but he feels airy and removed from all things. "I am tired."

"I need you to stay awake, I am afraid," Bjørn says: his white brows knit together as he looks at Loki, and he turns and looks from the window. "Five minutes, and we shall be home."

"Home?" Loki repeats. The word feels entirely foreign to him, and a smile full of whimsy comes to his face. "Alright."

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Thor's forearms rest upon the edge of the balcony, and he looks out over the city of Asgard. The streets are bustling in celebration at the wake of Odin from his Allsleep, and at the return of Thor from Midgard – every citizen is overwhelmed with joy, and dances, sings, marches in the streets.

Thor stands in the balcony of his bedroom, and surveys it all with several degrees of separation. Loki's own balcony is enchanted, in order that no one can see who stands upon it; occasionally, someone will wave up at Thor upon his own, and it would be rude for him to ignore them.

"Thor," Mother murmurs. She stands in the doorway, framed by its four marble edges, and Thor turns back to look at her. Her smile is soft and warm, her eyes focused upon his face. "I am told you met a girl in Midgard."

"Her name was Jane," Thor says. Thinking of Jane Foster, so far away from the Midgardian desert and planted in his city of gold, Thor actually feels himself smile. Jane Foster, so simple and yet so full of genius, so full of goodness, so patient! And now Thor is at home, amongst his own friends again, and Jane is lost to him.

And Loki…

"It must have pained you to leave her," Mother says, taking a step forward. Her hands are warm as they take Thor's own, soft and gentle where they stroke over the back of his hand. "I see real affection in your eyes. You must tell me of her."

"Some other time," Thor says softly. "At this moment, I find myself unable to reminisce."

"Your mind is consumed with thoughts of your brother," Mother murmurs. Her thumb traces a circular pattern upon the back of Thor's hand, and Thor pulls her close, embracing her. His mother's head is a pleasant weight upon his shoulder, her hair soft and straw-like beneath his stroking fingers, and for a long few moments they stand in silence. "Mine too."

"I asked Heimdall where he might be," Thor murmurs against his mother's hair. "He tells me Loki used magic to disguise himself as he fell, and now has somehow eluded Heimdall's gaze, slipped between the cracks… He has no idea what realm Loki might have fallen to."

"Since he was a young boy, Loki has been able to assume skins that are not his own with the greatest skill," Mother says. "This is not the first time he has eluded Heimdall's gaze, although this may be the first time he would admit such a thing."

"He betrayed me. He tricked me, and then wouldn't help me return—"

"It is in his nature," Mother says, and they break apart. He watches her back as she steps away from him, leaning on the balcony, as Thor had not moments before. "He has only ever wanted to be like you, Thor, and like Odin."

"Really?" Thor scoffs. The very idea of Loki trying to be anything like Thor is almost impossible to conceive of: Loki, who for so many years has been so very superior, so condescending, so two-faced and calculating. He loves his brother, but Loki is known for his schemes, his complexities – not for his honour upon the battlefield, or his ability to speak outright.

"Loki cannot be like you, or like Odin. He takes after me." Thor watches his mother's sad, distant smile, and he feels an ache in his chest. It hurts him to see her like this. And yet it hurts… It hurts, strangely, to be without Loki. Even with his betrayal, his trickery, his mischief, even then – it hurts to be without him. He and his brother are each halves of a silver coin. "You know he cannot grow a beard or fight with brute strength. He has never attracted women as you do."

"Loki has been married," Thor points out. "I have not."

"Do you know why Sigyn and Loki parted ways?" Mother asks him. Even as she speaks, she looks out over the city, her brows knitted together in an expression of deepest concentration Thor knows he sometimes has upon his own face, her lips pressed together. "Do you know why she left for the springs, and let their marriage die?"

"Loki is a being of chaos," Thor says quietly. "He has said to me himself he struggled to commit to his wife, and Sigyn, for her part, wanted a more stable lover, did she not? A warrior?" Mother very slowly shakes her head.

"Loki, for the longest time, travelled the universe. I don't know where he went, or what he did while he was gone. I know only that he would be gone for months and months at a time, with little more than an illusion in his place, or some tale told of a trip to Alfheim." Mother clasps her hands together, and says, "You mustn't tell your father of this, Thor. I know not what he might say." She inhales, and then continues, "Some centuries back, you know that Loki took to Sigyn, romanced her. They wedded in springtime."

"I recall," Thor says. He remembers the wedding well: he hadn't known Sigyn well, but she had been positively radiant in her dress of woven leaves, with flowers blooming in her hair and at her feet, and Loki had looked at her as if he had found some great treasure in her. His brother had suddenly seemed so happy, so very fulfilled, and yet…

"They had many children. You know of Fenrir and Angrbodr, and then of Hel. But their youngest sons: Narfi and Valí. You and your friends were far away, on some quest, and Loki… Loki fought with a man who had disparaged my honour, and that of Balder's. He was an elf, with seiðr made to rival Loki's own."

"Yes?"

"Loki embarrassed him. Humiliated him publicly, in the very centre of the city square, although your father counselled against it, and the elf's pride was wounded. He enacted revenge." Thor steps forwards, his expression a mask of concern, because his mother's eyes are dark now, and her cheeks are wet with tears. "He spelled Valí into the form of a wolf, so that he should devour Narfi. Then killed Valí and left a present of his fur on Loki's doorstep. That is why Loki and Sigyn separated, in the end. They were forced to bury their own children before their time – far before their time – because of Loki's foolishness, his pride. He may be your junior, Thor, but his many mistakes precede even yours."

"I believed it to be illness that took Narfi and Valí," Thor says quietly. He remembers returning with Volstagg, Sif, Fandral and Hogun, and returning to the palace with songs of his valour upon his tongue. It had been mid-winter, with snow falling in thick, white flakes – the sort of weather Loki would usually delight in and dance upon, enjoying every day out in the biting frost.

Loki had been locked in his chambers, buried with his own grief. Thor had tried every few weeks to knock upon Loki's door, even as months upon months had passed. Seasons can span years upon Asgard, if they so choose to tarry, and that winter had been the longest in Thor's memory. Loki hadn't appeared in the palace corridors again until midway through spring, and Thor's every attempt to ask after his grief had been aggressively deflected, until he had simply ceased to inquire.

"That was centuries ago," Thor points out, after a long silence spans out between the two of them. "I don't mean to say he ought not grieve, but for it to have been a motivation—"

"I merely mean to say that Loki is accustomed to having happiness and losing it," Mother says. She says it with impossible sadness, the look in her eyes distant and detached. "Some people in life, my son, are destined to be victors, haled as kings, told of as heroes. Others are not. This was a last attempt at the throne, and now… There is something about your brother you've never known."

"Some other tragedy in his past I don't know about?" Thor asks, trying to keep himself from bristling overmuch, and Mother bites her lip.

"The very first of them," she says. "Thor… Loki was not born of Odin and I." Thor stares at her, at her deep eyes, her down-turned lips, her melancholy, and feels his blood chill in his veins.

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Loki's eyes slowly open. He is lying on his back beneath thick, downy blankets, and he is in a room built of wood, with beams spanning the ceiling above him. He is on a small cot folded out from the wall, and he is aware of chairs and a sofa near to him in the room. He hears the soft crackle of a wood fire, and he smells it in the air, along with brewing tea and the crisp scent of new snow. He blinks several times, feels the seiðr in his veins, his tired flesh offering some quiet objection – it is a natural response by his body when he overtaxes himself, an instinct of self-preservation. Use not your magic, Master! You must let me rest.

"You are awake," Sven says. He is looking down at Loki, drinking slowly from the tea Loki could scent upon the air, and he is no longer wearing the thick coat he had worn the night previous. Now, Sven wears a shirt of soft flannel, and denim trousers over socked feet.

"You and your son… You are each cleanshaven. Why is that?"

"Bjørn's mother, she always hated beards. And Bjørn himself, well. He looks silly with a beard. Like a statue dusted with cat hairs." Loki laughs. He shifts in the bed, moves to pull himself into a seated position: he is wearing pyjamas, now, and he allows the other man to push the metal mug of tea into his hands. "Drink. You drank a bottle of whiskey last night, in the snow… Don't know what you were thinking."

"I don't remember," Loki lies, smoothly. He takes a sip of his drink, glances around the cabin. His seiðr, weakly pulsing, tells him he is not so far from where they had been in the car, that they are in a cabin isolated from too much else. The cabin has one storey, two bedrooms, and two outhouses – one for storage, another one for butchering. "I had an argument with my father, imbibed too much, and went for a hike on my lonesome. I've never been so drunk in my life… I could have died. Thank you for taking me in."

"It's okay," Sven says. He sits slowly on the side of the bed.

"Where is Bjørn?"

"He is in Trondheim. He works in the hospital there."

"A paediatrician?" Loki asks, recalling the familiar new word from the night previous, tasting it upon his tongue. Sven nods his head, slowly. In the morning light, Loki can see the lines upon his face and the thickness of his eyebrows.

"Not anymore. He was a paediatrician for twenty years, in Tromsø." Loki takes what small pieces of information he has gleaned: a loving son returning to his father after twenty years away… Loki has seen such cases before, and Loki is familiar with the effects of grief.

"What then? He returned after the death of your wife?" Loki asks: he takes on a tender tone, not meaning to accuse or become sharp with his words, and the old man looks at him with a quiet understanding.

"Very stupid, it seems, and yet you seem so perceptive." Sven shakes his head, slowly. He doesn't seem impressed, but merely amused. His lips quirk up into a slow smile, and he rests his forearms upon his knees, seeming to examine Loki with great thought and consideration. "No, my wife passed many years ago. Bjørn's husband was killed in a car crash four months ago: he left his practice and came back home to me here." Loki looks down into the mug of tea, which is a coppery-brown, and has a fruity tang to it. "Who is your father?"

"He is a businessman in Trondheim," Loki says: the lie comes smoothly from his tongue, and slowly he sets the mug aside, pulling himself from the bed. He thinks of Odin Borson, with his white beard and his shining eyepatch, laid out upon a bed with his skin pallid and sweaty, the spear Gungir doused lilac with Laufey's blood. "I cannot thank you enough, I am… Overcome with the weight of my stupidity. I don't know what I can do to repay you."

"You can put on some of Bjørn's clothes and make yourself useful: you can help me butcher the boar we caught last night. Tomorrow morning, Bjørn can drive you back to the city when he goes to work."

"Really?" Loki asks. "Just like that?" These men have trusted him, allowed him into their home, took him naked, sick and drunk (in their view) from the snow, and now here he stands, able to exchange his folly for a favour. It reminds him of Asgard, in a way, this code of honour and hospitality between two strangers – the Asgard he knew best when wearing a false face like this one, and not that of the lesser prince, Loki.

"Just like that," Sven says, and despite his fatigue, despite the ring of burnt magic inside him, despite his uncertainty at this wide, wide world, so different to the Midgard he once knew, Loki feels invigorated.

He feels ready to truly embrace this new life.