So it is a golden hall, Loki thinks. How positively cliche.
At first it's hard to feel the dimensions of his body, especially in the middle of his torso, which was so alight with pain and blood a minute ago.
He thought this would be like falling through time and waking up, sweaty and stripped of identity, on a torture bed in Thanos' cells. That is what dying was like last time he did it. He can remember it distinctly, and, with the indifference of agony endured, shrugs at the thought. He is not frightened. If Hel is where he is heading, he doesn't care, he's been there before and he came out the other side nearly ruler of the world.
Instead, though, it seems to be Valhalla materializing around him. It's definitely a hall - he can see a roof like a mountaintop soaring overhead, great arches looming large, everything glittering, a molten swamp of candlelight. Figures moving in the distance across a ballroom floor illuminated by (or made of) the same thick light as everything else… he can feel his fingers, and now his feet. Now he is standing in a shadow, looking out at the world-room and all its yellow. There is someone beside him, like a candle as well, an open melting flame, resolving itself into a cape and a mane of hair and a square, frank face -
Loki recoils.
"Thor?"
"Brother!"
Thor goes in for the hug, and Loki stumbles out of his clutches. "What is this place?" He demands.
"Have you not yet realized, dear brother? It is the fabled warriors hall. The journey has ended."
"So you're dead as well. Did Malekith get you? And after my heroic efforts to save your hide, too..."
"You misunderstand," Thor says. His voice is so genial. It fits the warmth and colour of the place, and Loki feels very cold, and very alone - as if, at once, he had seen the entirety of the universe, and there had not been one place where he belonged in the whole damn expanse.
"Time runs differently here," Thor continues. "Or not at all. I lived for many years without you - and hard years they were - but now that we meet again, it's as if we were never parted."
"Delightful." There's an edge of hysteria beginning to redden the fringe of Loki's mind. "So, what is this, is this a chance for you to say goodbye before I am cast out?"
Thor's face sobers.
Loki actually expects Thor to protest, to welcome him into the faraway flock of golden revellers, and even though Loki's gut tells him it is an impossible invitation, Thor's sudden seriousness elevates his panic.
"It doesn't have to be that way," Thor says.
"What are you going to do?" Loki spits. "Weigh my soul? Hah!"
He is still bleeding from the Dark Elf's blade, he realizes suddenly. There is a hole all the way through him. He looks down. His hands are blue.
He looks up at Thor.
"Can you see me?"
"Of course I see you, Loki."
"No! No! No! Thor! Answer me!" The words rip out of his throat, he grabs the front of Thor's armour and pulls him close - his hands are blue, there are white veins standing out on them, his fingernails are startling black against Thor's cloak. "Do you see me…"
Thor pulls away and cups Loki's face in his huge warm hands, Loki convulses with horror. He can feel Thor's fingers against the horrible bestial lines on his own face, he knows Thor sees him as Thor has never seen him before and yet he is still holding him. It is too much. Cruel, cruel! Cruel! Cruel that he would still want to die after death, that he, the insect with its natural home in the dark under a rock, would have nowhere left to hide. This is Hel, he realizes, the afterlife is all one: Valhalla for those with love in their hearts and perdition for those with ice. It is purely perspective.
He feels as if he will turn inside out with the sickness of it. His whole skin is crawling, every Frost Giant inch of it, his Frost Giant bones and guts want to slither out of the hole in his body and Loki slumps in Thor's arms, closes his red eyes against Thor's hands, leans his face against the kind calloused fingers, presses his mouth against the wide palms. This is the last and tenderest touch he will ever receive, he just knows it, and it is useless to pretend he doesn't crave it, here in the place where there is no darkness. He craves it even as he craves annihilation, as he wishes to be anything other than what he is.
"Loki," Thor says, stepping back and gesturing to the light, "What do you think of this place?"
"I hate it," Loki says dully. "I want to smash it, I want to tear every inch of it apart and -" His hands shake. "Do things, Thor, that I am ashamed to think. I want to unleash myself and all my fear upon it."
Thor nods, and looks down. His hammer is standing at his feet, and he grasps it contemplatively, as Loki waits - waits for a verdict.
"Do you want to love it?"
That is a different question than Loki expected. He is unsure.
"How could I love it?"
"You are everything you have ever been, in this moment, Loki. It all comes together, here. I know that once, long ago, you would have wanted to love this place. Perhaps you never would have loved it, but once you would have wanted to. Can you find that in yourself, Loki?"
Loki wets his lips. "Yes."
Thor holds out the hammer, handle towards Loki.
"Do not mock me," Loki says, voice full of pain. "Don't do that to me."
"You died for me," Thor says. "You want to love this place - do you want to lift this hammer?"
"I can't."
"Forget whether you can. Do you want to? Do you want to have such peace and escape from yourself that you could lift it?"
"If I could find that peace, Thor, that… that would be Valhalla. Unfortunately, I know heaven's not my lot in afterlife."
"Loki - do you want to be that?"
"Thor." Loki smiles, as if they're sharing a joke together. "Do you want the ugly truth? Since you've already had so much of it, I'll give it to you. I want to be that, to be able to hold that hammer, so much that I could die. But the dice are all cast, and it's useless to talk about."
"So much you could die? Would you?"
"I am dead, Thor."
"Do you have anything left, brother? Anything to hold onto?"
"Nothing."
"Your pride?"
"Certainly I do not have that." He lifts his hands and traces the foreign patterns on his face, the Jotun marks. He doesn't know what they are - clan symbols, birthmarks, he doesn't know. He finds them excruciatingly ugly, despite never having seen them in a mirror.
Thor holds out the hammer again.
Loki stares at it.
He wishes.
Oh, he does. To be a child again, to be something simple, degraded beyond the point of caring about his superiority or inferiority. To find stability in rock bottom, and stay there, stripped, forever. Not really Loki anymore.
He would kill himself, certainly.
He finds pleasure in the ferocity of that thought - that he would destroy the destruction inside him, given the chance.
"I have faith in you, brother," Thor says.
"I asked if you were going to weigh my soul."
"That you did."
"Well, I suppose we will find out which of us was right all along. I am sorry. This is going to hurt you, Odinson."
He grasps Mjolnir's handle.
The hammer was forged in a black hole coming into being, and Loki has felt the weight of that entire singularity against his chest, before. The dead, impossible weight of a whole world.
But all he feels now is a well-balanced war hammer resting in his two hands.
Thor is beaming fit to fuel a new sun.
Loki stands there, holding Mjolnir awkwardly, fearfully, frozen in position for fear it will become heavy again. All he knows is that he has a lifeline in his grasp and he cannot let it go.
"What in the name of the gods is this? What does it mean?"
It's almost a whisper.
"It means you would no longer have to trick your way onto the throne of Asgard," Thor crows, slapping Loki on the back so hard he stumbles forward, clutching the hammer to his chest.
"I don't - I don't want - I never want to go near a throne again."
"See! You're getting it!"
Loki falls to his knees, and the collapse inside him has reversed. Instead of wanting to throw up his insides, everything is sucking itself inward.
As Thor puts a hand on his hair, he lets out a sob.