Yet another chaotic one-shot from me XD Inspired by the lyrics "Tilt your head, there's a city inside" from the song Manta Rays by Ludo.
Also, I'd like to give special thanks to InfinitelyBoredForTheMoment.
Anyways I hope you all enjoy ^.^
There were oft days when Loki would wander the city of Asgard, squinting against the sun such that his dark lashes would interweave and nobody could see his eyes.
If they had, they might have noticed that the green orbs were distant, gazing off into some plane of existence that nobody else could see.
Loki's mind was a tumultuous sea of space, words and images writhing, tinted over with vivid feelings that had no colors that could be seen, but rather tasted, the way one can taste the coming of winter.
It was a cacophony of stars crackling and runes dancing unsaid, ghostly and intangible in the day, forming concrete and coherent shapes only when they manifested behind his teeth and rolled off his silver tongue.
His thoughts were glinting and slippery as fish, but he'd long since mastered how to catch them, how to hold the pieces in his hands and twine them together like wire until they grew blades and legs and teeth.
Even so, sometimes they would tangle him, catch around his deft fingers, gossamers he couldn't claw from in front of his eyes, and he would almost get run over by a horse-drawn cart. At which times Thor would grab him by his collar and jerk him out of the way, berating him for being so thoughtless.
Loki would just shake his head—if he was thoughtless, he wouldn't have gotten caught by them, the sharks that rose from the depths of his mind and latched their teeth around him.
Sometimes though, at night, the storm would dissipate enough so that he could walk the cityscape of his mind.
It wasn't Asgard—it couldn't possibly have been Asgard, in all her perfection and glory.
It was more a monstrosity of that golden city, gilded instead with moonbeams, the windows void and dark.
The buildings and streets were not set along the ground in orderly rows, but rather scattered about like the frost giants had ripped them up and rolled them like dice, so that the they were crooked, fallen on top of each other and windows caught on the handles of doors, while streets draped over and around them like snakes, or else stood on their ends.
The palace was upside down.
It was always thrumming with silent music and ringing with the clashing of weapons, and Loki would walk through the halls, clothing catching on the chrome chandeliers with their frozen flames as he watched his thoughts wage war, up and down the floor and stairs above him, bandying and slashing with everything from swords to hammers to spoons.
All matter of flora and fauna had taken over the abandoned city, and outside Loki liked to watch the trees tear imperceptibly through stone, and the blackbirds hopping from branch to roof to branch to cloud, their wingbeats hushes of lullabies and evening violets.
It always smelled like rain, and the grass, though drawn of any green, was soft as shadows and slick with drops of dew, even as they tore through the soles of his shoes.
Apples made the trees bow, and running through the forest trails that wound over hills, his feet never quite touching the ground and brooks swallowing the shadows of his footprints, he would leap up and snag one, sinking his teeth into the soft silver flesh, juice running down his chin like blood.
They tasted of ash and nectar.
The breeze would ruffle through his hair, removing the gel from the slick-backed tresses and tossing them into his face, even though he could not feel the breeze's cool breath against his skin.
Once Odin tried to plant a seed there, but it withered in the acid rain, drowned beneath the waves of perpetual night.
The Allfather tried several times to shape the landscape, but there was no sun to nurture his attempts or to burn away the creatures that lurked there and wandered ravenous, tongues lolling over their incisors as Loki scratched their predatory heads.
Loki sometimes wondered what was wrong with the place, because at times it would throb and pulse, parts of it growing hazy with lies; else the ground would tremble and shake, like a beast was hidden beneath below and pulling in vain at the fetters that restrained it as it writhed in pain.
It wasn't until the day his skin was peeled away to reveal blue, and with trembling fingers he poked the castle, watched as it tumbled to the ground, going up in black and purple flames as thoughts trapped inside it screamed, till they burned alive and became wraiths, twirling mockingly amidst the flickering tongues of fire.
It wasn't long till he felt the wind digging its fingernails into his skin, bitingly cold, darkness like a tempest tearing away every stone and ever book he'd piled in stacks along upon every available surface, uprooting trees and buildings and tossing them around, howls and cries echoing and throbbing behind his closed eyelids as the ground lost his solidity and he found himself falling.
And then Thanos found him, took him by the throat and strung wires of glowing cerulean, sewn through his lips and stretching to the gem that was set pulsing somewhere by his toes.
If Loki could have laughed, he would have.
Instead he stripped a branch off a sapling, strung it with strands of darkness till he had a bow and he shivered it across the strings of blue, playing it like a violin. The tune was high and lilting, a sound only the hellions of his mind could hear, and they danced to the music and ripped down the metallic structures the titan tried to construct.
And Loki played until the strands snapped, electricity on his tongue, fizzling like Thor's lightning storms.
Thor, who brought him home, begging him to cease his vengeance and hatred, the smoke still making his eyes water. But Loki's tears must have been frozen, for they stung behind the emerald orbs but never melted down to trickle over his sharp cheekbones.
Thor, who tried to set his city back into place, telling him that everything could be as it had been before.
But it couldn't.
Because the city there used to be was no more.
There were ruins, crumbled to the dust, growing over with feral-boughed trees and thorned brambles. Slowly, slowly, words fell like volcanic ash to cover everything with a sickly pallor, dangerous and radioactive. The chemicals didn't affect him, and he walked through the destruction and carnage like he was on his way home.
Raindrops make indentations in the dust behind him, turning felled trees to stone, and he hugged the smoke around you him like a cloak of fur.
Wild-eyed he scanned the battlefield around him, only to find that he was alone.
But he crafted himself a bridge of oil-black rainbows that stretched into the star-strewn darkness, rising up to meet his feet with each step.
At night, Loki no longer wandered the city.
He wandered the galaxy.