Author's Note: This is a short little piece that came to mind the other day. It was originally supposed to be a Loki-Frigga centric thing, and then-it took a slightly different turn, but I'm quite glad. Loki needs some closure. Post-Ragnarok.
Beneath A Greying Sky
The clifftop is deserted.
Loki does not know what else he expected, but it seems wrong all the same. He exhales, and turns. The wind is full and unhindered here, but for all that, it does not shriek or buffet; it caresses him, urging him forward, as if it knows why he is here. He walks a straight, deliberate line through the shivering grass, his eyes set on the horizon.
His attention is diverted once, by a break in the green, and he pauses, narrowing his eyes and raising a hand to keep his hair back from his face. Even now, what seems an age later, the grass remains scorched and withered, an ashen circle where the Bifrost had shot down.
Loki's lips thin, and he quickly averts his gaze and keeps walking. He has cursed his panic many times since that day, but tells himself that it would not have made a difference in the end. Ragnarok was a force none of them could stop.
He has never particularly liked Midgard, but he is thankful to be breathing its air in this moment–cold, biting air that smells of the sea, a welcome change from the filtered oxygen of the Sakaarian ship. He feels present here in a way he has not since… Svartalfheim? Before? He does not know. Everything seems terribly long ago now, as though he has fit several lifetimes into these past short years. Sometimes the impermanence of it all is terrifying.
The grass shifts under his boots until he is standing, for the second time, on the edge of the cliff. The sky is the same–low and grey, muting shadows until they all but disappear–and Loki wonders if it ever changes.
He raises his face to the sky, and he breathes.
Can you hear her?
The windsong wraps around him, muffling his hearing, and a pang of frustration wells in his throat. He swallows it back and listens harder, as though that might be enough.
I'm trying–
But all he hears is the wind and the sea, and as the All-father's voice crackles in his memory, a flash of envy rises within him. That Odin–broken, exiled, infuriatingly passive–should hear her again, and that he should be denied–
Broken. Exiled. Running.
You sound like him.
Loki's hands curl at his sides. His jaw set, his eyes clouded, he looks out over the water.
Silence. But then, he is so very tired of words.
He lifts his hands in front of his chest, and twists them slowly; and there an orb of light appears, pulsing gently between the spreads of his palms. He raises it in front of him, like the offering of a prayer, and breathes again as it leaves his fingertips.
A heartbeat passes, then another. Hesitation marks a line between Loki's brows–and then smooths again in quiet resignation.
Letting go was always a choice.
He circles his hands again. A second sphere rises above the sea to join the first, and Loki watches them. His eyes are wider than usual, drawing in their light as though it might become a part of him. His lips part, but he says nothing.
The orbs dissolve into the cloudcover. Loki gives a soft, uneasy breath that shudders faintly over his tongue. Then he turns away, striding quickly back against the grey embrace of the wind.