Despite everything, Loki finds his way to Valhalla.
He stands before the entrance to the great lodge, knee deep in a grassy field gilded by swaying wildflowers. A stiff breeze rolls in from somewhere behind him, carrying the cry of gulls and the scent of salt, and the faint creak and groan of longships at their moors whisper a promise of adventure and valor.
Before him, wide stone steps lead up to the massive double doors of the hall. The wooden doors are carved with a sprawling depiction of Yggdrasil, each of the nine realms nestled within its branches. Even from his distant vantage point, Loki can make out Midgard, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Asgard . . . .
Well. Valhalla is the home of Asgard now.
The sloped roof of the lodge is a blinding gold, tiled with the shields of fallen warriors, and above that is another floor, almost as wide as the first, with another shining roof, and above that another, and so on until the highest reaches of the lodge are lost within the mists.
While Loki is looking up and up and up, watching the eagles circle, one of the great carved doors falls open.
He doesn't notice the sudden hush at first - the gulls have fallen silent and the wind has all but died - until the harsh bark of a raven blasts monstrously loud across the fields of the dead.
And standing halfway down the steps in his winged helmet and blood red cape, Huginn and Muninn on his shoulders and Gungnir in his hand, is the Flaming Eye himself, son of Borr, Ancient One, Chooser of the Slain. Odin, All-Father, casts his stern eye upon his prodigal son.
Loki shakes.
Is he to be turned away from this place?
There are only seats enough inside the great lodge for those who have given their lives in service to Asgard, after all. Valhalla is meant for the likes of the Valkyries, surely, down to the very last one; the Warriors Three who would have lead the multitudes taken by Ragnarok; or Heimdall, a valiant and loyal guardian to the very end.
Valhalla is meant for people like Thor, who . . . .
No. Not Thor. Not yet. By whatever mercy still exists in the Nine Realms, please grant it that Thor yet lives.
Loki tears his eyes from the All-Father, lifts them upward to peer into the dark narrow gap between the doors, searching with a vice around his heart.
At this, Odin's stony gaze cracks. He recognizes Loki's panic, but doesn't credit its second, less selfish cause.
"Do not fret, my boy," he calls, his voice a quiet rumble that shivers the grass and echos off the distant mountains. "We have much to discuss, and more than time enough to talk. Come now, Loki, and take your place at your father's side."
And the All-Father extends his hand in invitation.
Feeling a leaden weight begin to lift from his legs, Loki looks from the doors of Valhalla to his waiting father and back again. It seems to take aeons, but he finally manages a single step.
Odin waits, patient and welcoming with his hand outstretched, and watches as Loki staggers forwards.
It feels like slipping free of the heaviest chains from the forges of Nidavellir, Loki slowly forcing his way through the whispering grasses. He reaches a halting walk, and then stumbles into a haphazard jog, and by the time he mounts the first gray step it feels like he's flying as light as a pegasus feather.
The olive branch his father offers is tantalizing, dizzying even, and Loki's eyes shine with heavy tears that threaten to spill for an eternity if he so much as blinks, but these eyes are locked on the real prize waiting for him at the top of the steps. He dashes past Odin, breathless.
"Loki-!"
Loki heeds him not. He's taking the steps three at a time, suddenly as sure-footed and agile as he ever was when he was alive, and in just another heartbeat he'll reach the top -
- where he crashes into his mother's open arms.
"Loki!" Frigga exclaims, hardly winded by the velocity of the encounter, the ferocity of the embrace. In fact, she's radiant, divine, her hair and her robes just so, just the way he remembers.
"Loki," she repeats, this time as a laugh. Loki feels the way she laughs, crushed tight within his arms. He feels everything. He feels too much.
She pushes him back with a gentle strength, just enough to get a good look at him, and it's under the kind inspection of this long-lost goddess that his tears begin to fall.
Frigga brushes his damp cheek with her thumb and tucks him back against her shoulder. His arms snake around her and hold tight like they'll never let go. It's alright. They have more than enough time here on the plains of Valhalla.
"Now, now," she shushes to her son, to the proud and angry and wrong and clever man who will forever be her boy. "You're home. You're home now, my Loki."
She catches the Odin's eye as he ascends the top of the steps, passes him the kind of smile only a mother and father can share. He stoops to brush a fond whiskery kiss to Frigga's cheek, and, after giving Loki's thin shaking shoulder a paternal squeeze, he pushes through the massive carved doors into the great lodge to to preside over the eternal feast of the dead.