He kills his father in the Hall of Kings.
How the mighty have fallen, he approaches the throne set on high, his father perched imperiously upon it. Oh, Allfather. What a great mistake you have made.
The Hall itself, named with plurality in mind, with the expectation of an eternity of kings, is hollow with the emptiness one finds on the shores of the city, the nothingness with which one watches a departing boat. Outside, the cries of children and the screams of the civilians pierce the air like a shrill symphony; it is music for his ears. Not so far away, age old walls are crumbling into dust in the onslaught. He cannot fathom the destruction that will be wrought tonight.
Kings, he thinks, and his steps are loud against the marble floors. But this Hall has only ever seated one. This is Asgard's own curse—the Realm Eternal is not untouchable, the Realm Eternal is not sacred, the Realm Eternal is not eternal; everything, in the end, is a slave to time. Everything is mortal. Stagnation, in time, becomes as deadly as a knife in the dark.
"Will you not fight, Allfather?" He murmurs. Odin's fingers tighten around Gungnir; gold and hard next to the incongruous soft fabric of his sleepwear. His voice echoes back to him, low and smooth; something almost like benediction. "Will you not die a warrior?"
"I would die a king." Odin says, and he seems to be made of stone already; already some kind of marble cast relic, thousands of years in the future. A king of stone behind glass, in a gallery with many rooms, to be peered at by the bored and curious. "And a king does not approach Valhalla until he is content."
Loki smiles. "And are you, Allfather? Are you content to pass over to the realm of the dead? Are you ready for Hel's embrace?"
Odin stares him in the eye; does not flinch for a single instant. In another life, his hand had rested on Loki's shoulder as the two of them watched a boat drift off the edge of the world. You must not be afraid, his father had told him. Kings are not afraid.
Odin stares him in the eye, and his voice is quiet. "I have no plans to die today."
A hundred thousand years ago he had heard these very words from a different mouth. Oh, Allfather, he thinks. Centuries pass and entire worlds die, and you have still not learnt from your own history. You have still not learnt to stare into the abyss.
The point of his sceptre rests lightly on Odin's weak, frail chest. His smile is a cut of teeth across his pale face. "None do."
Loki Odinson, Loki Liesmith, Loki Silvertongue, the sentence falls. You have led the sworn enemies of Asgard into the heart of the city. You have bred treason and fostered war. You have broken the peace with Jotunnheimr. You have threatened the safety of Midgard, which is under our dominion. For your crimes, which are many and despicable, we shall strip you of your core.
They rip it out of him, tear it out of his burning throat; extract it with dirty, bruised fingers, out of his every cell. His whole body is screaming.
His spine contorts; his head is thrown back until his throat is bare to the world. There is a roaring in his ears, building and coiling and gods, no, no, anything but that. Anything, please, please, please—
When it is over, he is hunched on the ground, his hands clenched together as if in prayer. The world comes back to him in pieces—a hand on the side of his neck, the court is gasping, the ground is shaking and there is something hollow inside him, a stretch of nothing in which only the dead have learnt to walk.
It takes him another moment before he realizes that the court is silent. It takes him a moment to realize that he is the one straining for air, that he is shaking, and not the world.
I'm sorry, Thor is whispering, over and over again. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
In the quiet of the aftermath, nothing moves. The silence is only broken by the ugly push and pull of his lungs, his body's desperate motions to keep him alive. There is a growing well of nothingness in his core, where the magic he had nurtured for years had sat. It had been the only warmth he had ever possessed; and they had ripped it out.
"Get off of me." He says, breath faint. He can hear laughter. They are laughing, oh, gods, they are laughing—
But when he looks up, the Allfather's mouth is a stern line. The Hall is silent.
He rips himself out of Thor's grasp, and there is blood in his mouth.
Loki Liesmith. Loki Silvertongue. Loki Destroyer-of-Worlds.
His tongue touches his teeth.
He is a child, and on his left, and Thor is about to cry.
The warrior that had fallen in the battle was one of Asgard's finest. Loud and brash and quick with a sword; he had been one of Thor's heroes. A dagger to the neck, Loki thinks. At least it had been fast.
He nudges his brother. "Straighten up," he whispers. "The dignitaries are watching."
Thor wipes his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. "Asgard has lost a great warrior today."
Asgard has lost nothing, Loki thinks. A sword, a pair of hands, a ready voice to shout 'for Asgard!'. The Realm Eternal will mourn his death, send him to Valhalla, and come spring there will be another, younger and brasher and quicker with a sword, to take his place.
His father is gold and dignified grey, a torch held lightly in hand, his spine straight as he touches the flame to the boat. There is something curiously hollow inside him, something that is heavier all the more because it is absent. His gaze trails over Thor's tear-streaked cheeks, over his brother's lip caught between his teeth. His fingers twitch, and he bites his tongue.
Afterwards, his father stands by his side; hands clasped behind his back, watches the boat drift towards the end of Asgard.
"You are not afraid?" His father asks.
His mother is staring into his brother's eyes, lips gently curved, a hand smoothing back a strand of hair. Loki tears his eyes off them, and forces himself to watch as the flaming boat reaches the edge of the world, watches it tip and fall.
"No, father." He says. "Balder was a great warrior. He shall dine in Valhalla tonight."
His father smiles. "You are not afraid that his spirit will come back? I hear you have no fear of the dark."
He is young, but already he is learning what is fear and what is not; what to shy away from and what he can use. The disappointed light in his mother's eyes, drifting too close to the banqueting fire, the stern voice of his tutor, when he spreads his hands in the library to make the books dance—that is what should be feared. Not the dark, not the myriad halls of the palace. Not his home.
He lifts his chin. "I'm not afraid, father. I'm not afraid of anything."
Kings are not afraid. And he is, after all, born to be king.
He counts thirty days and thirty nights before anyone comes.
His cell blocks out the light of day, and the shining stars at night. One, two, three, four, he counts in his head; a constant stream of numbers and he does not sleep. Five, six, seven, eight—I am waiting, brother.
On the eighth day, there is no fruit on the plate they bring him.
On the eleventh day, the guard who brings him his food is late and there is a new stench of metal on his clothes.
On the eighteenth day, they change the lock two floors down from his cell. Seven new guards are added to his rotating roster.
On the twenty third day, there is nothing.
After thirty days, four hours, thirty eight minutes and fifty seven seconds, the door of his cell opens, and it is not a guard on the other side.
Loki looks up, and smiles.
Bring the fight to Asgard, he thinks, and the Other's fingers are centimetres away from his skin. "I don't threaten."
His lips curl. Lizards, crawling on a desolate rock stars away from anything that can pose a threat. What great plans are they forming; what worlds do they look towards? Asgard. Asgard—the answer is always, always Asgard. The shining heart of the universe, the centre of all that is living, the haven towards which all the realms of the universe inch on feeble knees.
He has glimpsed their plans. Plunder, and spoils, and slaughter and finally, at the end, a blood soaked throne for death.
How artless.
"You have but words," he murmurs, and the Other pauses, hissing.
I have something far more poetic in mind, he thinks. Burn it down, salt the earth, and litter the world with the corpses of gods.
Why?
He smiles. Why not?
He does not move. "Brother."
Thor's throat works, the muscles tensed tight. "Our father wishes to see you."
He makes a graceful, slight motion. "You may inform your father that I graciously decline." His smile is a swift, easy cut of teeth. "I am quite occupied, as it were, with my incarceration."
"Loki, please." Thor steps forward, voice rising, and he fights the urge to laugh. Oh, brother. You never understood how to use the power the world has so freely given you—what need is there to request from a prisoner? "This is urgent, our realm—"
"Tell me, how many attacked Vanaheimr?" He asks lightly. Thor's expression freezes. "I assume they were enough to overwhelm the forces Asgard stations near the portal—"
"Loki, if you have had a hand in this—" and there it is. Outstretched hand, palm open. There are things that cannot be beaten into submission, but then again: that is a lesson Thor has never learnt.
He laughs. "What, here? Safely locked away in the gracious rooms Odin had seen fit to acquit me with? Surely not. No," he steps forward, every movement a conscious submission. "No fruit from the western realms, and barely any herbs on the meat. Unless your method of attack is bland food …"
He is less than five feet away from his golden brother, close enough to see his eyes; close enough to strike. His hair is longer, lighter; there is a bandage around his forearm, a scratch on his armour. Loki's gaze sweeps over his brother, and he notes the way his left arm does not move as freely as the right, the way it seems the bone in his shoulder is cracked.
"Have you fought a battle recently, brother?" He asks lightly.
Thor's fingers clench and flex, and the silence is heavy. He touches his tongue to his teeth, to better taste the quiet.
"We need you." Thor says. "I need you."
A week ago Asgard had been breached. A week ago an army had made its way into the Eternal City, had slaughtered civilians and shed blood in the streets. Oh, my brother. He thinks. This has only just begun.
"You are my son." Odin says. To his credit, the old man never flinches. "In all the ways that matter. You have always been my son."
On Midgard there is a story that mortals read aloud from their books. Many thousands of years ago, a man had led his son by the hand up the side of a steep mountain, to better approach their god. He had bound his son, had been ready to sacrifice his flesh and blood at the behest of a faceless deity.
Who do gods sacrifice to? He thinks. Who do gods worship?
"Allfather," he murmurs, and the blade of his sceptre cuts through the thin cloth of Odin's shirt, hand-woven by his wife. "Are you attempting to appeal to my heart?"
Odin's fingers are shaking. "You are not what you pretend to be."
He pulls his arm back, hand clenching hard around the staff of the sceptre, teeth bared. In the instant after, the blade is in Odin's heart, and the old man is gone.
There is no great rush of light. The universe does not gasp and stars do not die. In the Hall, where once he had stood in ceremony, where once he had kneeled at the old man's feet to receive the honours of a warrior of Asgard, there is only silence; punctuated by the pained labour of his own breath.
A god has died, he wants to tell the universe, wants to scream into the blackness between stars. A god has died.
A god has died, and the realms roll on. A god has died, and Asgard stands still. A god has died, and he is still here, his sceptre stained with blood, buried between his father's ribs. The worlds have not struck him down, Yggdrasil did not smite him.
He pulls his blade out of the old, limp body with a sickening squelch, and watches as Odin Allfather, King of the Gods, tips over and falls at the base of his throne.
There is bile in his throat that he cannot cough up, and when he sits, feet mere inches from the old man's bared throat; he has to clench his core to keep it down. He looks down at his shaking hands.
You did not learn to stare into the abyss. But the abyss still stares back.
They give him back his armour.
A black tunic, open at the throat. The leather feels good against his starved flesh; solid, steady, like a second skin. He takes his time smoothing his hands over the coat, over the metal of his vambraces, where the material tightens at the waist and expands at the shoulders; he almost feels like a conqueror again. It is a hollow gift, but ruling, like conquest, is a performance. And a prisoner, a peasant, has no place at a table of kings.
That was their first mistake.
They escort him to Odin's personal chambers, and he busies himself by catching the eyes of the nobles in the crowd and grinning. There is a tension in the air, something taut and stretched about the ladies and courtiers of Odin's palace, stopping to watch him go past. He spies a scar on the forehead of a chambermaid.
Ah, he thinks.
When they reach the east wing of the palace, he is greeted by a lone figure.
"I'll take him from here." Sif says.
She is thinner, it seems. The lines of her throat are sharper, the shadows deeper in the corners of her eyes, in the lines of her mouth, where her collarbones stand taut against her flesh. There is a kind of weariness in her eyes that he had seen in Thor's, and he wonders, suddenly, if she had thought he was dead too.
For an instant she simply stares, as the guards around him bow and retreat. Her lips are tight, her gaze darting. Her eyes are bright.
"My lady," he says, and affects an exaggerated bow. "War has treated you well."
In the place in Midgard which Barton tells him is called New Mexico, she had faced her death in the form of Odin's destroyer. Everything, he had ordered. Destroy everything. He had not thought to spare her life. He had not thought to spare anyone.
They had not been strangers, once. Sif's lips tighten, and she turns without a word.
Odin sits behind his desk, dwarfed by his wing backed chair, a frail man in a frail, crumbling world. Find the right thread, and tug; that's the key. The humans question their heroes; topple their gods—entire civilizations and entire pantheons have fallen in the thousands of years since humans have developed cognitive thought. They wear their gods like a second skin, and when their idols cease to fit or respond, they shed them.
"Allfather," he inclines his head, and sits carelessly opposite. Thor, hands clasped behind his back, on his father's right side, flinches.
Odin's mouth is tight. His fingers clench and unclench. "My son."
It is all he could do to not snarl. He sprawls himself elegantly, and drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Please, Allfather. If we are to have a discussion, we should at least be civil."
He was to smile, but now is not the time to be smug. Out of the corner of his eyes, he spies Sif's hand on the hilt of her glaive, the way Thor's throat works.
"Asgard requires your services," Odin says, after the drawn out silence. "We have been attacked—"
"A week ago," he tilts his head, and relishes in the way Odin's eyes dart up. "They broke into the city; a sizeable force if I'm not mistaken—enough to have forced the kitchen wenches to fight with pots and pans. Perhaps there is a traitor in your midst; perhaps not. But it is not only the army you are concerned with, is it, Allfather? Otherwise why come to me? No, no," he laughs. "They have magic, do they not?"
A keen eye, a sharp tongue. Before he had learned the arts of the universe, they had called him Loki Liesmith. A well placed word is just as deadly as a fast knife, as sharp as a blade through the ribs; it can pierce a heart just as easily. You should have cut out my tongue, Allfather, he thinks. The game has only begun, and you've already made so many mistakes.
They give him two things that day; they made two great mistakes.
First, his armour. A king does not negotiate with his body exposed to the world. A conqueror must face death in nothing but blood and glory.
Second, his core.
They give him back his magic. It falls within him heavy, and secure, like benediction; like home. When he comes to, when he blinks and comes back to himself, he is kneeling at Odin's feet, but this is not defeat. Oh, no.
He looks up, and the first thing he sees is the light glinting off the hard edges of Odin's robes. The first thing he sees is the opening at his throat, the soft, weak flesh. He can almost hear the beat of his father's heart.
There, he thinks. Checkmate.
He does not move from his seat when his brother bursts into the hall. He does not flinch when Thor roars, and runs, and falls to his knees by his father's corpse. His fingers have long stopped shaking. He can barely breathe.
"The healers," Thor shouts, and his voice is thick with fear, with hate. "Get the healers!"
In the silence between the court's shock and the sudden spring of motion, he stands.
"What have you done, Loki?" Thor whispers. "Loki, what did you do?"
It takes all his control to smile down at his brother. A hundred thousand years ago, a boy had let go off a spear at the edge of the world, and on the other side of the abyss there emerged a man. A hundred thousand years ago, there were no more plurals in the House of Odin. Today, he is giving it back.
"Hall of Kings, my brother." He says, and for an instant, there is something like hatred in Thor's eyes. "I've won you a throne."
Kings are not afraid; he bends, and whispers into his brother's ear. And you were born to be king.
The humans house a curious collection of old gods behind glass, between stone walls.
There, a statue of a golden god-king. There, a Babylonian goddess. There, an Egyptian figurine; a German earth mother; the remains of a pantheon, carved into stone.
He strolls easily between the exhibitions, the mortal clothes light on his back and indescribably welcome, after so many years of captivity. The face of a bearded man stares down at him.
Once, in the deserts of the old kingdoms, beneath the light of the sun, this face had graced the side of a temple, had commanded the spilling of blood, had held all the prayers of its worshipers in one hand. Once, this dead piece of stone had been a god, this carved likeness had been a titan.
The humans question their heroes. They topple their gods.
"Amazing, isn't it?" A woman grins, next to him. Her eyes are bright.
"Amazing," he says. He has learnt to soften his consonants, draw out his vowels. When the woman leaves, bounding off, he drifts closer to the statue, presses his hand very lightly against the titan's stone leg.
Who do gods worship? He wonders, and thinks of Odin's glittering court, thinks of the eternity of the Realm Eternal, thinks of a realm rotten at the core—find the right thread, and tug. He tilts his head to one side, and thinks that the titan's features are not so strange after all.
So this is where gods go to die, he muses.