Warnings for this fic: it's basically all about death in general, and the first chapter specifically is about animal death. The shorter second chapter is still about death, but that's mostly about Frigga, so it's a little different, and you can skip right to that if you don't want to read a scene of animal death. On the plus side, this isn't a very happy fic, but it was going to be even sadder.
Title is from an otherwise unrelated song by Brand New.
The first time Loki encounters death, he is a child, and he does not understand.
He and Thor are exploring the city streets alone. Technically they are not supposed to do this, but no harm has come of it so far, and anyway it's a beautiful day, exactly the kind no one can stand to spend indoors. Summer's heat is finally starting to fade, the air sharper and crisper without actually becoming cold yet. The marketplace is a fascinating hive of activity, and the residential streets nearby are as peaceful as the market is busy, all sun-warmed stone and wood and arching trees.
Loki doesn't see it happen, only the immediate aftermath: the carriage driver cursing and jerking his horse back toward the center of the road, and the small body of a brown and white cat lying limp on the paving stones. For a moment they both stare, and then Thor takes off running after the carriage, shouting his outrage. Loki is frozen, everything feeling curiously unreal except the cat's still little body and the panicky conviction that he has to do something.
The cat's leg jerks as it struggles to get up, and the shock of realizing it's still alive jolts Loki into action. Maybe he can help it, he has to try, and he can't just leave it lying in the road to get run over again—
He darts out into the street, heart thumping, and picks the cat up as carefully as he can. He tries to support its spine with his arms without getting blood on his clothes, but its head flops over his wrist, and he hurries to lay it down again at the side of the road. Its tail lies in a limp curve on the paving stones and somehow that is the worst part, the most wrong. Cats keep their tails in motion, lashing the full length back and forth or twitching the tip, or sitting with it curled close and neat around their paws. Not…this.
"It's all right," Loki says. His voice sounds small and shaky. "You're going to be all right. I'm…I'm right here, sweetheart," he adds, haltingly, because it's what his mother always says when he's sick or hurt, but he doesn't know how to make it comforting like she does.
The cat's wearing a narrow red collar, he realizes with an awful lurch in his stomach: it's a housecat, not just an unlucky stray, and that makes it even worse. He fumbles with the buckle for a moment that feels agonizingly long and finally pulls it free, but there's only a little bell on the collar, nothing to indicate where the cat belongs or who might want to know their pet is hurt.
Loki rests one hand on the cat's side and feels the tiny motion of its breathing. There has to be something he can do, he thinks helplessly, but he doesn't know any healing spells and can't think of anyone nearby who does. And he can't go for help anyway, because that means leaving the cat to suffer alone, and—he can't. So instead he kneels there for what feels like a very long time, stroking the cat's slightly sticky fur as blood pools beneath its ear and open mouth.
Thor comes back eventually, a ferocious scowl on his face that softens when he sees Loki. "I couldn't catch him," he explains, and crouches at the cat's other side. "Is it…?"
"It was still alive," Loki says. "I thought…I…I don't know." He doesn't know, and that's still worse, that he knows he felt it breathing but its mouth and eyes are fixed open, every part of its body limp, and its whiskers don't twitch when he touches one.
Thor puts his hand in front of the cat's mouth, and Loki finds himself holding his own breath (as if that will make a difference). After a moment Thor draws back with a grimace.
Loki's hand falters in its stroking. "I don't know when it happened," he says, and his voice sounds as small and lost as he suddenly feels. "He was alive. It was. I don't…" I don't understand, he wants to say, and swallows it because what would be the point?
Thor puts a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, brother. Let's find somewhere to get you washed up and then we can go home."
I can't just leave him, Loki wants to say, but he swallows that too, his throat feeling tight. There's nothing he can do, after all; the cat is dead and past helping. It seems so wrong, lying there limp and bloody, eyes staring at nothing. He should close its eyes, Loki thinks, that's what you do with a body and it's one last thing he can do for this poor little animal, but when he tries he can't make the eyelids move.
"Come on," Thor repeats, his voice gentler than usual, and he helps Loki to his feet. His knees are dirty and aching, Loki realizes abruptly, and there's drying blood all over his hands and up both arms, another bright red spot of it on his shoe. He doesn't know when that happened either.
"He was wearing a collar," Loki says numbly. "Somebody's going to look for him. We can't just…"
"I'll tell someone," Thor promises. "But there's nothing else we can do except get in trouble for sneaking out."
It's never really mattered before, but Loki imagines being scolded now and cringes at the idea. Trying to use the cat as an excuse feels wrong in a way he doesn't think he can explain, but trying to concentrate on anything else and act contrite for something that's only a problem when they get caught—that's awful too and he doesn't want to deal with any of it. So he gives up and nods, and Thor finds a waterspout where he can wash off the blood (red and sticky, with so much more left behind on the street, and he scrubs until his skin is pink and stinging). The blood on his shoe rinses off too, leaving him clean like nothing ever happened, and then they sneak back into the palace the way they snuck out.
Loki's chambers are down the hall from Thor's, and indecision chews at him as they approach Thor's door. He needs to be alone, needs to be with someone, doesn't know how to ask for either, and so he says nothing. They both hesitate before Thor gives him an awkward smile and a pat on the shoulder, and then Thor disappears into his room and Loki shuts himself in his own.
He tries to read, for a while. He finds himself staring into space instead with no idea of what he's been reading for the past few minutes, and when he pages back to find the place he stopped paying attention, nothing looks familiar and none of the words quite make sense together. Finally he gives it up as pointless and goes to bed early, curled away from the window because it's still not dark yet and some light gets in even through the thick curtains.
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the cat again and that horrible stillness; imagines another child somewhere in the city, distraught over the loss of a beloved pet. Staring into the dimness of his empty room isn't much better. He wants, rather badly, to get out of bed and run to Thor's room, crawl under the covers, and stay where he knows someone is alive and breathing, wants to get away from the silence battering at his skull, but—
He's gone to Thor's room before, sometimes, when he's had a particularly bad nightmare (and after some of his worst nightmares, when he's curled shivering beneath his blankets, heart pounding and body frozen, sometimes Thor seems to know instinctively, and then he comes to Loki's room instead—although now that Loki thinks about it, he realizes that hasn't happened for some time). Thor's never turned him away, even if during the day he sometimes likes his friends' company more than Loki's. But this is—Thor will know why Loki is upset, because they both saw it, and for the first time he isn't sure his brother will understand why. He would listen if Loki tried to explain, probably, but the idea of speaking it aloud is bad enough, when he isn't even sure he can. The thought of struggling for words, trying to give voice to that awful wrongness that is a cat who was alive and isn't anymore, a life cut short when Loki was right there, touching it, and he still doesn't know when it happened—trying to make Thor understand why it was so wrong and jarring when he can't find the words to understand it for himself—
He imagines trying, and being met with incomprehension. Imagines—worse—empty reassurances from Mother, who would comfort him because he is upset but might not understand either, and the idea is unbearable.
He sleeps, eventually. But for days after, he thinks of it again at the most random moments, the cat and how still it was and how death doesn't make sense, and all he can do is miserably hope the little animal knew it wasn't alone when it died.