"Thickened Skin"
by moonship

Part One: Thickened Skin

First, there had been primordial darkness and the elves in all their stern glory, eternal night, and with the entirety of the universe as they knew it spread out before them. There had been the younger races taking their first steps along the branches of the World Tree: Asgardians. Vanir. Jotun. There had been a wife, children, and the certainty that in some form or another, the unbroken line of Svartalfheimwould continue. Malekith's father had watched, his large hands steady on the arms of his throne. There had been bloodshed and a people ground beneath the heel of Bor. There had been the Kursed. Most importantly, there had been the Aether, blazing brightly before inverting into cool darkness.

For the Asgardians, there was no slow, creeping of the light: they had the Ragnarok as the beginning and their end, though Malekith wouldn't know until years had passed. Even then, he never came to think of Ragnarok as the death of an old order and the birth of a new. Ragnarok was an empty Asgard and the realization of thwarted vengeance: "Scour every last inch of the towns and then do so a second time. Slit the throats of any Asgardians you there's no blood to be found here, we find it in Vanaheim. If not in Vanaheim, then in Hel!"

Ragnarok was the whine-and-flash of a grenade tearing a black hole into the space above the Allfather's new throne, and soldiers who were ever stone-faced as their king turned on his heel and strode from the great hall.

Above all, Ragnarok was Jarnsaxa. Jane- incomprehensible to Malekith as the birth of the light and as the death of his civilization.


The veils between the worlds had weakened slightly, as if the Convergence had never fully ended. It was the Convergence that had awakened him in the barely functioning ruins of his ship—early, with barely a thousand years passing since his battle of wills with the Midgardian child. The Aether had snaked and curled about them both as they struggled for dominance, blacking out his vision as he demanded still more from his failing body. She cut down the Kursed—Algrim, most loyal of friends—before him, and took Malekith's own arm in the process. He'd nearly bitten through his tongue from the effort not to scream, drawing what remained of his magic into his good arm as he readied himself to die as the last king of Svartalfheim.

"We've got something we say on Earth, you know. You live by the sword, you get to die by it," she'd said, breathless and giddy from her moment of triumph. For the moment, she had the strength to withstand the full reality of the Aether's power. He took no comfort in the knowledge it would suck her dry in the end, not with the ruins of his legacy stretching before him. Hair had floated about her face, a film of red over her eyes and for a flash of an instant, he'd thought of a child playing with its father's sword, inches from gutting itself by mistake. "So this is going to be your last chance. Only shot. Now get your ship and your guys the Hell off my planet—"

Just like a child ready to gut itself in its incompetence.

The next time he'd opened his eyes, it was to nothing more than the hum of the machines that had kept the tattered remains of the svartálfar alive over the past millennium. He was the first to return, aware as only the king could be of the sudden shift in reality. As the scant hundred warriors left in his care opened their own bright, blue eyes, he stared blankly at the dented hull of his ship. They shifted, raised the visors of pale-faced helmets as the feeling slowly returned to stiffened limbs. Malekith saw none of this, and knew only one thing: for the first time, the Aether did not call him.


They waged war in pockets of Vanaheim they could reach before the tears vanished and reformed somewhere else. With a single-minded intensity that bordered on madness, Malekith hunted for those weak spots for his army to pass through with a single-minded intensity that bordered on madness. This 'Convergence' was nothing like the last: it was far more unstable and even more impermanent. They tore the limbs from the shambling, undead things in Hel, forced to retreat with their captives as quickly as they'd come lest they find themselves trapped. The pathetic skirmishes never lasted long enough for Malekith, who fought like one of the Jotunn in spite of his one arm. He was a blur of pale skin and scarring, of crescent-shaped sword, and magic. He was the man who once held the holy Aether in his grasp without being consumed, and to Vanir children he was the stuff of nightmares.

Between battles, he spent long nights striding the gleaming road of the Bifrost. He worked magic on the stump of his missing arm as he pondered over the gate between the worlds. With its guardian and key gone, Malekith had no way to learn its secrets other than trial and error: prisoners of war were hurled into the Realms of his choice, but he never succeeded in pulling them back. He left them to die on the frozen wastes of Jotunheim, or dumped them back where they'd come from—again, again. When there were no captives and no blood to spill, he waited for nightfall, when the light was least painful. Alone, he would stand too close to the shattered edge of the rainbow bridge, staring for hours on end at the black spot blotting out the stars of which the Asgardians were so fond. That rip in time and space was so dark and endless that the sight of it caused his breath to hitch in his throat.

He was doing just that the night the Aether finally whispered to him, tugging at his senses with spidery red-dark fingers.


Malekith followed that thread to the Realm of Midgard, not particularly surprised as to where it led. Nor was he surprised by the great, twisted heaps of metal and concrete that had been grown over by ivy and moss. Thick tree roots burst from the broken windows of buried vehicles, and as the ship they'd taken continued on at his direction, there was still more green along with large stretches of water that hurt to look at without his mask in place.

On the occasions he left the ship, there was always a drizzle from overhead, just light enough to bring a welcome coolness. When he did so, he always raised the mask just enough to breathe deeply of fresh air, sliding his tongue over his lower lip to sweep away the bit of dampness that gathered there. After a thousand years, Midgard was reminiscent of a forming scar: new flesh covering an ugly gouge. Part of him was tempted to rip it open all over again just to watch it bleed.

The Midgardians were few in number and difficult to find, existing in small camps and walled settlements meant to keep them safe from marauders who'd miraculously found their way from other worlds and into a realm full of fresh, tender meat and easily-breakable slaves. They cut swathes through the marauders themselves: the hard-eyed mortals with their heavy jewelry and clothing vaguely reminiscent of Asgard weren't worth the moments it would take to strike them down—on foot or from the skies. Now and again, they still found it necessary to leave the corpse of a human upstart in their wake as a warning. The blood from those twisted bodies was the reddest thing he saw those long weeks, but in the rare times he slept, he always woke sweating and with the faintly ozone taste of Aether on his tongue.


The same single-minded obsession that had led him to the Infinity Stone so long ago had brought it within his reach a third time. His warship hovered over the human settlement, an ugly, dark smudge in the gray sky that sent the people below into fits of terror. Parents grabbed their children and fled for the supposed safety of trees, or below ground into shelters painstakingly dug and reinforced by hand. Futile as it was, a gate of stone and weathered metal dropped with a clang. Flanked by his men, Malekith disembarked, the fingers of his one remaining hand clenching into a fist of anticipation at his side.

There was a Midgardian behind those gates holding what was his by right, foolish and no doubt half dead as the weapon slowly ate away at their insides-

"Break it down!" The words were familiar, but he had no memory of saying them- nor did he care if he'd spoken them before: "We have Midgardians to kill!" He raised his arm, made a sharp, slashing motion toward the gate as he bared his teeth. As the heavy, repeated clang of a gate being battered rang in his ears, he exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Behind his mask, he smiled for the first time in years, the expression fleeting and very easy to miss. Magic gathered at his fingertips, cold and bright as the heart of a star—'My legacy, Bor— now is where I reclaim what was taken-'

The gates buckled inward to reveal nothing more than an expanse of hard, packed earth and flimsy buildings hung with battered metal shields more ornamental than useful. He faltered for all of a moment as realization dawned, bellowed above the lot of them to indicate they should hold— "Enough!"

'Enough,' he demanded of himself, a hairsbreadth from losing control as he well and truly understood what he was seeing. The truth of it all was bitter, cruel, and just one more thing to endure. He would be calm and bide his time, and they would endure as ever-

A gritty sort of mist that might-have-been-red and could-have-been-black formed where her feet touched the ground. The rough hem of her skirt whipped violently around her, fabric clinging to her legs and thighs as she rose to the tips of her toes and then scant inches into the air. She was shrunken and somewhat hard all at once, as if the magic within her had ground at and refined her body time and again until it had what it wanted of her. She met his gaze without hesitation, a widow and a bereaved mother. She was host to the Aether and the near-Queen of Asgard: Jarnsaxa. Once, she had been the woman called Jane Foster, and now she waited, gaunt-faced and narrow-eyed.


Author's Note Part Deux: So I watched the movies again and this was in serious need of some fixing. Italics indicate the use of foreign language. Damn Dark Elves. Revised as of 3/25/14.

Author's Note: So, uh- hi. I have no idea what I'm doing with this, but I had a brain bug and it wouldn't go away until I wrote something. This is obviously AU with entirely too much time-shifting back and forth, not to mention a likely OOC Malekith. I'd like to thank fairfarrenlovelylydia for writing the first Jalekith (only?) Jalekith fic I've ever found! Also, a shout-out is due to LadyElemental: I was pretty stuck on how I wanted to proceed. She was one smart cookie who made use of the name Jarnsaxa, who happened to be Thor's Special Ladyfriend in Norse mythology. From there, it led me to looking up a few things I'd forgotten, and then deciding to butcher the concept of Ragnarok. All due props to you if you're reading this, LadyElemental! (Jarnsaxa: she used it first, boys and girls.) Now... should I kill this in a pile of fire or consider continuing? If you have thoughts on the matter, or find any glaring errors in the story, feel free to let me know!

Disney owns them. Please don't sue me, Walt.