The instant Hela let go of Loki's hand, all of it – Hel, Loki's mother, Valhalla – was gone.
Instead, he was lying on his back and the winds had swept a layer of grit over his body. He sat up with a start, gasping for breath, hand clutching at his chest. There was no hole this time, nor any blood. The flesh was entirely intact and only a scar was left behind as evidence of his injury.
Loki was unsteady as he clambered to his feet.
When the winds picked up and huge raindrops fell, it was as if Svartalfheim itself was spitting on him. He had to keep his eyes squinted to avoid the black sand from blowing into them as he scoured the surrounding lands for any sign of shelter. There was little to be found apart from wide open plains.
His destination was obvious – back to the path between Svartalfheim and Asgard. There was little he could do while upon this realm but he knew Asgard better than any other realm. He knew not only its people, its strengths, and its weaknesses but also how to influence those within it, how to trick those within it, and how to operate within its most powerful circles.
Asgard was no barren moon; it was much better defended than that.
Slowly, as he walked, a plan began to form and take hold.
He would walk into the cave entrance as himself and exit as one of Asgard's guards. And the best part of that plan? The best part was that he wouldn't even have to utter a single lie. Or, as he thought about it, perhaps that was the worst part.
"Loki," Odin said after he'd dismissed the other guards. It was not a question, nor an accusation.
Loki tilted his head downwards.
"Yes, my king," Loki confirmed. How he loved double meanings.
"Have you found his body?"
Loki shook his head.
"Why have you returned without his body?" Odin was tight-lipped as he rose from the throne.
This was wrong, this was not an eventually that Loki had been prepared for and anticipated. He had to think fast.
"We searched for hours–"
"Do you think only searching for a few hours is good enough? He was my son."
Loki's mouth fell open. How was it that himself, the Jotun relic, was declared as a son by the very man who would have beheaded him for his crimes that were less than half of what Thor did? Had someone managed to impose as the Allfather before he'd gotten the chance?
"You would still call him your son? After everything?"
"I cannot deny that we did not share the same blood. But it was myself and his mother who raised him and none of his actions can erase that."
Something seemed wrong. Loki could feel his plan slipping around him, or perhaps it was himself who had become entangled and trapped within it.
"Is that so?" Loki didn't mean to let himself say that; it would be too risky, too foolish. No guard with a healthy regard for his life would be as presumptuous as to question the word of the Allfather as he just did.
Then Odin looked at him – not at the illusion of the guard that Loki wore – but right at him. Thor had been wrong about many things a long time ago when he named his father an old man and a fool, but he had been right about one of those two things; Odin had grown weary and weak in his old age but he had never been a fool. Loki braced himself for Odin's inevitable attack, to have to haul out magic and dodge blasts from Gungnir, but they never came.
"Loki," Odin said again, softer this time. "I do not know how you are here but despite it all, I find myself glad that you are alive."
Loki's hand tightened around one of his throwing daggers.
"I hope you'll understand if I am having a bit of trouble believing you. It was you, after all, who if you had your way my head would have been removed from my shoulders."
"It would have been a fair sentence for your actions," came Odin's terse reply.
The illusion of the guard fell and Loki was left staring outraged.
"What I did hardly compares to–"
"I am tired of this dance," Odin said, sinking back onto the throne as if this was another court matter.
"As am I." Loki's words were clipped. He flung a dagger in line with an artery in Odin's throat but before it hit, Odin clutched Gungnir and a golden aura appeared around him that deflected the blade. Loki threw himself to one side and one of the Gungnir's blasts erupted at the place he had stood a short second ago.
Loki aimed another at the hand that clutched the sceptre, knowing that if he could just manage to separate Odin from Gungnir then the rest of it would be comparatively easy. But the ward remained strong and protected Odin well. His dagger fell uselessly to the floor.
"How do you wish for this to play out, Loki?" Odin spoke as if the effort of maintaining the ward was nothing. "When you fail to defeat me, what do you wish to happen? How and why did you return here? What plots are you hatching?"
Loki pressed his treacherous lips together and said nothing.
"Have you returned to spite me? To spit the gift of Valhalla back in my face?"
"Let's not pretend that was generosity on my behalf; it was Frigga you sought to please."
Odin ignored him.
"Or are there more to your plans than mere spite? I see no outcome that does not end in you roaming free so tell me; did you find yourself craving the solitary confinement of your cell? If it is Asgard's prison you seek, you needn't attack me. If it is the end of my life that you seek then you cannot have it."
Loki left an illusion of himself stood in front of the Allfather whilst simultaneously rendering his true form invisible and he crept behind the old man.
"Why not?" He whispered behind Odin's ear and reached through the aura to twist at the arm holding Gungnir. The ward scolded his flesh and caused Loki to let out a cry of pain. With a jerk of the arm, Odin sent Loki reeling backwards.
"Because, Loki," Odin said, "you possess neither the ability nor the conviction to defeat me."
"You believe me to not have the conviction to end your life? Should I be flattered that you think so highly of me? Or should I be dismayed at being so greatly underestimated?" Loki took a step forward in a calculated predatory movement. "Or are you trying to goad me into proving you wrong and making a rash move?"
"Your mother," Odin watched as the mention of her caused an involuntary flinch, "died believing that you are still redeemable. The moment you kill your own father is the day that you can never be redeemed."
Loki grinned widely, showing all of his teeth.
"Then I have nothing to lose."
"You may have killed your own birth father but you never thought of Laufey as your father, did you boy? He was not the man who raised you. He is not the father who is sitting in front of you. It matters little how many times I wish it not to be true, the fact remains that I am still your father."
"Oh, you had a hand in raising me." Loki spoke quietly, his rage seeping into his voice like ice and fire all at once. "But you were always a king above a father."
"Does this mean that you have purposefully forgotten every time I spoke to you as a man does to his son? Every time I listened to the frets of a child and did not dismiss them as idle? Every time we sat together as a family?" Odin demanded.
"You appear to be under the impression that these memories are… sweet. You forget how much lies taint things." Loki gestured to himself as a prime example. "No matter your claims, it is hardly a coincidence that since I learned of my true heritage you have made no attempt to establish anything remotely resembling fatherly behaviour. Once you could no longer lie to placate me you were happy to lose all paternal attachments to me–"
"Tell me; do you truly believe your own words or are you merely using them to excuse your behaviour?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"Are you stalling, Loki?"
Loki masked his doubt by wearing a false smile and let out a light laugh. "What reason could I possibly have to want to stall this?"
"Because you cannot bring yourself to kill me," Odin said simply. "I've known you as my son for almost as long as you have been alive and I know how this scenario will play out. We will argue like this for hours, achieving and resolving nothing until you inevitably fail to slaughter me when you consider me to be in a moment of weakness. Or... I could drop the ward and bring the moment you lash out into occurrence much sooner. You always did have a flair for the dramatic, Loki, but I am afraid this will end rather anticlimactically when you realise the truth of my words."
Loki stared in disbelief.
"I will drop the ward and let you take your best shot." Odin nodded to one of Loki's throwing knives lying on the floor. "You have an accurate throwing hand, as I recall. And I guarantee that I will be perfectly safe."
Loki raised a hand, fingers shaking and gripping the handle of one of his throwing daggers. "I am not so willing to walk into your trap." Instead, Loki brought up the knife so that it bit into the skin of his own throat. "Let us test the truth of your words, shall we? That's what you claim you want." The tremor in his voice was more audible than he would have liked. "If you truly consider yourself as my father, you will end this by dropping Gungnir." He swallowed, hard, then added, "if not, it will hardly be a great loss to you to lose someone you have no familial attachments to."
"Loki, you must have only just returned from Valhalla, be reasonable–" Odin began to move towards him and Loki reflexively dug the blade further into his skin.
"The greatest liar there is," Loki accused, eyes brimming with rage and his face contorted into a snarl as he drew the blade backwards.
Odin threw Gungnir to the ground. "Loki – please."
Loki stared at the sceptre lying on the ground and then at Odin. "Thor was right after all." He barked a laugh. "You are a fool."
A vision of Loki, rendered with the blade still at his throat remained in place whilst the true Loki proceeded to move towards the sceptre.
"Loki," Odin said, reaching towards the illusion, "put the knife down." Odin's breaths were laboured and it seemed to require more effort than it should have done for him to move. The Odinsleep. It could not have come at a better time. "Your mother would never forgive me."
Loki gripped Gungnir tightly and pointed it at the back of the man who would only spare for the wrong reasons. The sceptre was shaking. Loki took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the blow. The Allfather had reached the illusion now, fingers stretching towards the hand gripping the dagger. Then Odin's fingers went straight through it.
Odin stiffened and braced himself.
Now. Loki had to do it now.
An irritate snarl ripped out of Loki's throat and he proceeded to clobber the Allfather around the back of the head. It was a blunt and inelegant blow but Odin slumped to the floor, lying unconscious all the same.
It took only a gesture of the hand to adopt the Allfather's skin and turn Odin invisible. He blinked at the space where his father's body lay. He should be feeling something more. He should be delighted, filled with relish, triumphant with the knowledge that he defeated the most powerful being in the Nine Realms.
The memory of the last time he witnessed Odin fall into the Odinsleep lingered like an unwanted headache.
The vaults of Asgard were each the size of a courtroom, with a combination of hundreds of powerful objects, ancient artefacts, and relics with both known and unknown uses forming labyrinths to walk through. Loki could feel the prickling pull of the Tesseract, stronger and more persistent than it had been when he had been confined to his cell. Loki shook it off; he'd survived for over a thousand years without it. He didn't need it, no matter how much the Tesseract tried to convince him otherwise.
The Tesseract was hidden well, but Loki had the advantage of being able to feel it pulling at the edges of his mind. Its whispers became stronger the closer he got.
It sat on a tall pedestal, its glowing blue muted by the metallic golden hues of the surrounding objects and walls. Loki grasped it and his flesh felt oddly united with it, as if they should have never parted. The glow of the Tesseract was almost making him giddy, but the elation was of a different brand than the last time he held it. This time he had a higher degree of control and deliberation and the Tesseract brought his thoughts more clarity rather than escalation. It shocked him to notice how much of a difference the change in circumstances had made.
When his breathing returned to a normal pace, he discarded the illusions and stared down at the frail old man lying on the ground. He curled Odin's fingers around one handle, grasped the other himself and closed his eyes.
Loki had braced himself for the pain but his bracing had been inadequate. The power of the Tesseract stole through his veins in a rush that was neither hot nor cold but it burned all the same. It was raw energy and it had been so long since it last touched him.
Once the pain was over normalcy felt sweet, if normalcy could be described as standing on a carpet of fog so thick that he couldn't see his own boots. The air was more than cold; it was a crisp sting that felt as if it punctured his lungs with each breath he drew in. Odin's skin had already lost its colour but Loki knew that it would be longer before he himself would succumb to the cold.
Loki made slow progress with dragging Odin's body along the ground. The old man was heavy and the last time the two of them travelled to Niflheim had been under very different circumstances. Loki had still been a boy and the purpose was purely educational. Odin had dressed both him and Thor in rare enchanted clothing that would prevent their bodies from freezing so long as they did not remain too long. As they walked, Odin pointed out and named each of the frozen statues of ancient expelled warriors. As a boy, Loki had clung to his father's hand for fear that the fog was concealing monsters underneath it. As a man, Loki was the monster it concealed.
A thick layer of frost had grown over the Allfather's skin and clothing. Most men Loki would have trusted the harshness of the realm enough to leave a foe behind but Odin was no ordinary man and it was not a risk Loki had any desire to take. Loki would wait. He would wait until Odin was indistinguishable from the rest of the cast out warriors and only when Odin was no more than another frozen fable would Loki return to Asgard.
Odin was slumped on the ground, the one arm stretched out from Loki dragging him having frozen entirely solid and the rest of his body not far behind. Loki positioned him in the midst of a cluster of warriors and the scene looked like a scattering of life-sized board game pieces, all with Odin at the centre of it. Some of the statues still bore weapons, their frozen faces contorted with rage and their arms raised to strike while others were on their knees, eternally begging kings long since dead to spare them of their fate.
The image of Odin, still and stiff and unmoving with one hand forever reaching out towards Loki lingered long after he teleported away and it was an image that haunted him as much as it delighted him.
Authors note: the rest of this is up on A03 under the same username. I will not be posting any more of this on this site.