Thrashing, kicking, clawing in vain. Yggdrasil flashing beside them in soaring colors, time and space whipping their hair into a billion directions. They plunge into an amber world of snoozing flames, and fall onto hills made of cooled lava.

It is not good for their knees. Odin stands up with a groan before Loki does. They lost Hela, and Odin knows they should be looking for a way back, but he cannot help but watch as his son's knees shake as he stands.

Once Loki is up, the Allfather catches himself wondering when he added a couple more inches to his height for the dozenth time that day. He thinks it must have something to do with the weight he's lost. Loki's cheeks are as sharp as ever, along with everything else. He could slip into the wind like a ghost if he willed it.

Loki meets his eye for the second time since the fragmented royal family reunited. Just for a second, but it is enough to make Odin shudder at the fury brimming behind them. It's a special fury reserved for him. He knows that because Thor certainly didn't get that look, and even Hela, the Goddess of Death who crushed his beloved home [and playground] into ashes, didn't.

Just as Odin braces himself and hopes his shards of conversation can sustain a conversation, Loki wonders off. Allfather follows but keeps his distance. His youngest always needed to be eased into a conversation. He was beyond intelligent as a boy, hating small talk and rumors, but if you lit him up with the right starting point...

Loki's thin fingers brush against the molten ground. The rough soot and extra powdery ashes cling to the pale tips. Odin can see his son's curiously cautious eyes take in the compounds that make up the sample and then drink up the surroundings without having to watch him do it.

He brushes his wild white hair down, nervous. Fixes his awkward Midgardian clothes, tightens his robe's strings, clears his throat without making a sound.

"I thank you, Loki."

"We need not talk," comes Loki's static voice inside the particles of air that get more condensed by the second. His fingers have curled together. The deceptive muscles in his arms tense.

Odin shuts his open mouth. He can hear Frigga beyond the grave: "So your recompense has come due at last." He thinks it is not fair, that the king side of him got too strong for his father side to keep in check with. His mind had planned to bring their found son into their chamber for a swift yet personal condemnation after giving the boy a few weeks to reflect on what he had done, but once his feet stepped out of the locked room they had kept him in, Odin heard himself barking for him to be chained. Brought before his throne as a captured criminal. He thought his anger and offense would soften at the sight of his youngest son who was no longer dead, but that expression he had carried, the look of pleasure at chains and no remorse for his wicked actions, had brought the monster out of Odin.

The All Powerful Allfather can do nothing but watch as his son stands again and walks ahead without so much as a suggestion of wanting to glance back.

#

Allfather rubs his eye. He's so tired. More than anything he wants to lay his head on his and Frigga's bed, retreat into the Odinsleep and never waken again. But there is no more Asgard. Hela and her never ending army of spawns kept getting stronger with each hit. She would have separated their whole team for the fun of killing each one off on their lonesome if Odin had not run for the nearest boots that a rip in Yggdrasil was already sucking in.

He wants to thank Loki for not kicking him off, he supposes. And he wants to embrace him because Frigga's gone and his youngest bends to the ground like her and his eyes slant like hers when he's angry and he thrashes his daggers with her angles and tricks and...and...Odin feels his eye stinging again. He for all his compromised strength and power wants to hold on to his son before Hela breaks the entire World Tree into splinters. Is that too much to ask?

At the edge of a plateau made of crumbling rock, Odin watches his son look into the horizon. His jaws are working. His hands twisting. He seems to think something through before he jumps.

Allfather bolts to the edge, heart pounding, where he sees Loki standing a few feet below. Streams of burning lava twist around him, which he isn't paying any attention to. The thing that Odin forgets so often comes back to him. Loki's a Frost Giant whether he likes to admit his anatomy or not, and he believes Loki's got enough common sense to put together that they're in Muspelheim, but... His heart rams up to his throat. Frost Giants die in Muspelheim. As if to confirm, Loki's breathing deepens and quickens at such close proximity to the lava. He swats thick sweat off his brow.

Perhaps that was the death Hela intended for him. Crabs dropped into a slowly heating pot; that's the idea she got to rid herself of Loki. She got it wrong if she expected his son to just curl up and accept his trap.

Allfather climbs down to where Loki stands. He collects the residue of his Odinforce to create a comfortable temperature around the boy, but it's barely forming when Loki's gaze soars to him.

"What? You think I'm going to melt?" he spits. Odin opens his mouth, but Loki cuts him off with a violent wave. "I have no need for your protection, Allfather dearest."

Odin's exasperated. "I am trying to help my son."

Loki's nostrils twitch while a slight wheeze takes over his strong voice. "What son? You grabbed the wrong boots."

Allfather can't help it. He's too old to pretend he can handle the animosity between them. His eye waters until it spills over this time. "I know I—"

Odin startles at the speed in which Loki storms over to him. He's right in front of him, the closest he has been for four years, drops of sweat dripping on his robe. His eyes blaze like a dying supernova with an agenda. He has a gut feeling that his tears have triggered him, not his trying to mend their shattered relationship.

"No speaking, no aiding, no putting so much as a flake of your skin on me. Does your festering brain comprehend my words, old man?" He crushes one of Odin's sandled feet. He's so close their chests touch; that Allfather can see the absence of Frigga's tender embraces written across his skin. "Leave me be for the rest of my pathetic life or so help me Norns I will ring the blood out of you after freeze-burning your fleshly coil."