For ZenyZootSuit.
.
At least there is a fight. He will go to Valhalla, maybe he will, maybe, since he is struck down in combat. If you can call it combat.
It is humiliating, though; Loki who has never been one for the sword, too weak to use magic, starved with hollow scoops out of his cheeks. He would be gasping at the energy it takes to even hold up his sword - if they hadn't sewn his mouth closed.
It isn't even a fight. Loki is against Asgard's best and dullest, a warrior who makes the odds impossible, in a little space where Loki cannot duck around and use smallness to real advantage.
And however humiliating it is it does not last long.
It is like she has seen before, but instead of a warrior it is a child she sees caught in the stomach with the blade, shocked backward, bleeding at the lips. Instinct and adrenaline force her son's mouth open and it tears wide and she can only watch as he screams, falls, curls in agony. As dignity is ripped off and he goes from criminal to boy to dog to dead in his own blood.
The people do not cry.
She strides over before they let her, as he bleeds away, she catches his last moan and all she can do is hold him and watch his eyes flatten and put his head to her lips and
.
hold him
.
it is very cold
.
A few days pass and then she places his eyelashes to his cheeks and kisses him like she used to when he was innocent of everything except being born to the wrong woman. There are people coming, the warrior who murdered her boy is cleaning off his sword and being paid for his executioner's work, and she is numb and the air tastes iron.
Red and white.
He lies like a king should.