The Brightest Game

Loki, traitor of Asgard, plague of Midgard and son of Laufey, the jotun-king, stood proudly overlooking a vast valley. His garments screaming scarlet, skin unrepentantly blue and blazing with cold, he stood. In the valley, the sun shone. He'd tracked it overhead, coat shifting the sand, every step true and forceful. He alone had broken through the desert walls and claimed the land. Not through force, never through force... he had simply spoken. And those fools... his valley filled with glorious fools, they took his words as truth and then made law out of them. The Silvertongue's victory. The conquest of words.

A disgraceful one according to the whole of Asgard, as it had required sword nor axe nor bow and in that wretched realm, that which remained clean of blood could not have been truly conquered.

Yes, he remembered it well, the fragment of times gone past; he, a mere babe still, had cut his finger whilst on an exploration of the gardens, and bled for the first time in his vast and undying memory.

Then, he had been conquered by Odin. Then, the moment the lone drop hit the grass, before he could even conjure up tears, he had joined the long list of stolen relics. He became the second and oft overlooked son of Odin on the edge of a leaf, and no one told him.

Well... he knew now. He knew. Bitterness turned to blood, and suddenly his fingers were stained red, blood starkly contrasting against the silver-blue skin it sought to escape from. The flow could not be stemmed, and when the first drop fell, far down into the valley of Loki the just and righteous King, the landscape changed.

Barren, cold, of life and light utterly void; his kingdom laid to ruin. From the charred homes of his people, the chitauri arose. They moved through the wreckages like the parasites they were, slithering through crevices and scaling the cliff walls. After him, again, frothing at the mouth like the beasts they were. Nothing human resided on their faces, nor under their skin; they were mere machines, with no capacity to listen beyond the implanted command, and they knew very few... mainly kill, perhaps torture and then kill, if their superior was in a more benevolent mood.

Ever closer they advanced… closer and closer to the perch of the once-king where vicious winds swirled around his form, leaving him trapped and powerless. Magic failed him. The Chitauri had no ears through which a lie could penetrate. Loki was done. Loki would die here, a God stripped of his divine right by these misshapen creatures of shadow. How pathetic.

Thor, with his endless golden light, he would've blinded these eyeless wretches and walked away a free man, a God among Gods. Damn him, then.

Of course, death would be too great a mercy for the fallen son... death was not what the Chitauri soldiers wrought. Instead, where their touches landed, flesh began to rot. Disintegrating down to tendon, muscle and bone until nothing was left and no senses remained... the Jotun turned æsir switched races once more. He became a soldier among soldiers, a creature of the periphery where nought could be remembered. He walked among thousands moving as a single organism, he and them, the same. All the same. None had names, none had faces... they were nothing. They were all nothing.


Loki awakened in his cell, bathing in sweat. He would have screamed, had his voice allowed it... this day marked a second week of sickness. Not that he knew, of course, he had not the light to confirm it... what he knew was fever, and ache and a boneless fatigue that wouldn't leave him, nightmares that failed to cease and hallucinations that refused to melt back into brick and stone until he was certain of... of his return. He could feel him under his skin, where magic had once throbbed so pleasurably.

"You remember me, then." Thanos spoke from the far periphery of the universe, voice clear as its everlasting night.

"Yes, I re-remember y-you. I could n-not forget." Loki heaved a distorted sigh. He could not, indeed. His every fiber revolted, just at the sound of that voice.

"I shall come, liesmith, for you have failed me." the threat loomed, and yet didn't. It wasn't a threat at all; At its heart it was a vow, a promise sure to be upheld.

"I reg-regret to i-inform you that I c-can no longer be o-of use. Kill me, sire, l-let me trouble you no more. I am w-worthless, am I n-not? I stand to d-die regardless of your in-intrusion." yes, Loki was the most talented liar the nine realms had ever borne witness to... but not a fool. Not arrogant enough to partake in this final game. If he rigged the dice, if he marked the proper cards, he may have been capable of cheating death in any other circumstance. But this, this was of another order entirely. Death would be the prize! And behind the other curtain, the one woven from the hopeless darkness Thanos ruled and embodied entirely, there would be damnation. Eternal humiliation. He would be thrown away and used as a plaything by the rejects and the outcasts of the universe, savages all, and the end would not claim him. It would not dare intervene with the plans of the mad-titan, nor would anyone else.

So, there laid the silvertongue, proud enough to grovel, with just enough arrogance to beg, to cry, to plead... and he did. The guards took note of his insanity, but were too intimidated to question him outright. A small number went to fetch the newly crowned king, leaving the majority behind to stand awkwardly at the sidelines of a spectacle none wanted to see.

"Perhaps I will not bother myself with your wretched hull... I might just destroy you from here. From my throne. And I shall watch as you spasm like a rabid dog, revel in the pain. I would not allow you death, I would keep you as a toy."

With that, the Sire of the unknowable took his leave of the prisoner's mind, leaving him mad with fear. Mad with the anticipation of that which his mind could not contain, mad with... with madness itself.


When Thor, the golden God forever shrouded in light, slit through the darkness of the dungeon some time later, he saw a captive driven sick with sin. Perhaps an untamable, infuriating portion of his mind saw a brother, suffering. Whatever the case, King Thor prided himself always on his keen sense of justice, if not on his wits. And to see a once proud man beg stone walls for death was not justice. Not at all.

Still, he remained weary of the liesmith and his fabled skill. For close to an hour, he stood on the threshold of the cell. The prisoner, a brother once, never acknowledged him once in all that time. Sunken eyes, greying lips, traces of vomit around the corners of his never-stilling mouth; he didn't care for Thor's attention, not for that of the guards… merely for that of the shadows. The shadows that could apparently grant him his demise. He tracked their motions across the walls, eyes sliding over Thor as if he wasn't even there. Please, he said; please kill me, he begged. Please.

Loki had never been one to say it, not even as a child. Too prideful, too stubborn. And before Thor's coronation, at his sentencing, the word hadn't passed his lips either. Loki was a man of grace. A man of strength. An evil man, maybe, but also every inch a God. Gods did not beg for death. They didn't. They simply bore their separate eternities until time ran out. They didn't beg! Why did he have to keep saying it? Why?

"Please," said Loki. Febrile, tired, mad man Loki. He tried to lift an arm to grasp a handful of air, but it refused to rise. He was weak.

"Please," sounded a fractured voice. Thor nearly yelled at him to keep quiet. He couldn't stand to hear it anymore. That word… that hateful word!

"Loki." he darkly intoned, finding himself ignored in favour of a discolouration on the far wall. As he advanced on the gaunt, mewling thing that at one time might have shown features of one he loved, he kept track of the... the conversation Loki was attempting. Fear arose within his broad chest, prompting him to call the ailing man once more, with more force. It was true, Thor didn't believe in the redemption of the liesmith any longer. He didn't believe it could ever be. He didn't believe it could ever be deserved. Not after Midgard... but did he actively hate him? It took quite a lot of effort to maintain, hatred, and when Thor tried especially hard he thought of how exhausted Loki must've been when he let go of the Bifrost. How he would have been crushed beneath all of its weight, had he not fallen instead. Hatred was not it, exactly. It wasn't trust, certainly no favour, but when he heard his once-brother barter with the shadows for death, something welled up within him, strong enough to lift the prisoner's diminished physique.

"Still your tongue now... you plead with bricks, Loki, nothing will come of it."

First, he merely took inventory of the captive's ailments: Fever, nausea, nothing too exotic save for a small collection of blood drops staining the cot just around the outline of his ears that no guard could explain.

"Th-Thor... is that y-you?" Loki whispered as though addressing a single star, out of the millions; he spoke as though he expected to be ignored, so very soft it was nearly the case.

"Yes, 'tis I. Why does blood stain your ears, Loki?"

"It... I-It hurts. When he s-speaks to me, it h-hurts. Can y-you not d-deliver me? I bring n-nothing but chaos... be r-rid of me..." even in his wretched state, Loki knew the plea to be futile. But then, a man with nothing to lose was free to risk what he pleased to.

"No. I shan't be your executioner, Loki. If I had wished for you to receive the death-penalty I would have made it so. Now, tell me who speaks to you." Thor cast a suspicious glance at the line of guards that stood, poorly pretending not to be listening in. Had one of them decided to go forth and have a spot of fun, at Loki's expense? Ill-will, he could forgive, but he as king had commanded them to treat him with dignity; that made it their absolute duty to obey.

"Thanos..." Loki moaned, leaving his once-brother to sag in both relief and abject sadness. His brother's sharp wits had dulled in all this time spent ill.

"Thanos is not here, Loki, he cannot issue any harm." Thor signaled a look to the guards. He hoped it to be an apology.

"Y-You misunderst-stand... he i-isn't a person, n-not just... Thanos is an entity of e-energy. He can... c-claim any vessel h-he wishes, from a-a-any dis-distance... he only n-need... he on-only needs to..." sensing Loki's growing distress, Thor softly shushed him. He sat there, on the edge of the cot, until a gurney arrived. Told himself he did it because he thought himself a fair king, and that he surely was, but kings never felt so keenly for their subjects as to cradle their weary heads. The guards saw, and wisely failed to comment.

"The man is half dead! Why was I not informed sooner?" he demanded after his brother had fallen blessedly unconscious.

"It was never as bad as this, sir. Not to my memory, at least. Not until just now. He'd been ill, certainly, but these dungeons see a lot of ailments, sire... if you would forgive my saying so, they seem to be detrimental to one's health..." a meagre smile found its way onto his face.

"Listen well, if you ever dare mock my brother's ailment again, I should see your loathsome tongue parted from your foul mouth before its final word could be completed." Thor failed to notice his slip, familiar as it felt, and simply turned to sit beside his... yes, his brother, despite everything. Despite Loki, really.

Forgiveness should be earned, but bonds like the one they'd once shared, they just stayed. They existed throughout everything: even in the far distance of such utter hatred and chaos, the imprint was felt.

The guards, for their part, merely stood solemn and mute on the fringe of the tableau of the King and the mad prisoner. His brother. Thor tried to consider his earlier words... tried to conceive of a world in which he could believe his brother without hesitation, and wondered where that left them. If Thanos had claimed Loki's body, had he been as much of a pawn as his supposed soldiers? Yes, it could also be a lie, a singular lie in an ocean of falsehoods, and thus easily disregarded... but he'd begged for death. Why weave the untruth which would exonerate him, if his goal was to die regardless?

Finally, Thor decided he was to visit Odin - after he'd seen to his brother's welfare, of course.

"I won't have you killed, brother mine... I never would."

"I am n-not your brother, you fool..." Loki returned to wakefulness with as hateful a hiss as he could manage on a quarter intake of breath.

"You would have your final moments filled with hatred, then?" somehow, the thought saddened Thor, even if he had no intention of ever allowing his brother's demise.

"There w-would b-be no difference... you are a-as much a fool as you were before I l-left, I as much o-of a m-madman." Loki stammered hatefully, eyes flickering briefly with the depth of his illness, his madness, and his fear.

"Could you withhold from such vitriol for just a moment, Loki? Allow this hapless fool to care for you now, before you berate me once more." a healer came to stand stiffly beside the cot, handing his king potions to administer without so much as a glance at his former prince.

"I requested transport, healer… I should like the prisoner brought closer to my quarters." Thor sought the eyes of the aged æsir and held them hostage with his own electrifying gaze, willing him to speak, to act, beyond the passive passing of a few vials. "Your father said it would be unwise to allow the prisoner out of these confines."

Thor let a sigh escape to signal his frustration. "Aye? Well, know then, healer, that though the Allfather may have deemed it so, it is I you serve, and I would see this prisoner taken upstairs and his ills tended to. What I ask of my subjects is not kindness, it is not forgiveness, but if it is compassion and compassion alone that serves to separate the noble races of men from beasts, then for the sake of the Norns, summon some up before the man dies! Shackled in the darkness, begging for aid from the bricks of his cell whilst those who dare call themselves fair linger by and do nothing… you would expect me to sink so low? Out of sheer spite? Odin perhaps, perhaps the lot of you, but not I, do you understand!?"

Thor turned on the onlooking guards with such force, half a dozen turned tail in search of a stretcher before he had completed the motion entirely.


Author's Notes: Just a few quick things; I intend to update on a weekly basis and my tumblr handle is the exact same, minus the spaces, should anyone be wondering. This is my first attempt at a Thor fic, so any criticisms would be welcomed!