Loki's frozen but a million thoughts run through him at once. What is it that Father always says? Blood blessed by these words will banish an angel…
Keeping his eyes on the angel, Loki backs slowly from the window and takes slow calculated steps towards Father's small collection of knives on the mantle of the fireplace. The house already has symbols carved over every doorway to ward against angels, but that might not be enough.
He's on the other side of the room now and yet, the angel still has not moved, not even as Loki reaches out for one of the larger knives, barely visible in the darkness. The handle is cold and solid and it scrapes across the brick as he slides it toward himself.
The angel shifts, just a twitch of its wings, and Loki freezes, holding his breath. His palm is sweaty on the knife, halfway off the mantel, and his fingers shake. Please, please don't move, Loki silently pleads with the angel.
Loki wait a beat longer and then pulls the knife to his side in a flash. The angel's wings spread in response; it's like it's warning Loki. He takes the knife and slices a long cut along his palm and the blood spills instantly, trickling down his forearm. Loki gasps but opens his mouth, ready to say the blessed prayer, but suddenly he can't remember the words. Panicked, Loki glances up at the angel.
It's still in the trees but it's crouched down, almost blending into the branches. It looks like it will take flight.
"Loki?"
The sudden voice has him spinning and he's met with the light of a candle. Loki blinks rapidly and acts quickly, yanking the candle from Thor's grasp and blowing it out. "Loki, what's going on?"
"What's the prayer, Thor? What are the words?" Loki urges. But as he turns to look back at the angel, his eyes widen in disbelief. "It's gone!"
Thor grabs his arm, keeping him from going any closer to the window. "What are you talking about?"
"There was an angel out there!" Loki exclaims, showing him his bloody palm. It looks black in the darkness.
"Holy…" Thor says when he sees all the blood. He takes the knife and candle out of Loki's hands and discards them on the couch. "Put pressure on that," he says, pulling his gun seemingly out of nowhere. He takes slow steps away from his brother to the window and Loki watches, biting back pain as he pressurizes his small wound.
A minute passes and Thor returns to his side. "Are you sure you saw something?"
"It was there," Loki growls out. "I know what I saw."
Thor swipes a match and relights his candle. In the flickering light he looks exhausted and afraid; it makes him look far older than nineteen. "Well if you did see something, it's not there now." He pockets his gun and scoops up Loki's hand and smears his hand across the blood. Thor uses Loki's blood like paint and draws a symbol on the window pane, whispering the Latin words that Loki had forgotten. Even with him saying them now, there is no way Loki'll remember that.
"We have to tell Father what I saw," Loki says when he finishes.
"I'll tell him," Thor says, shearing off a strip of cloth from a blanket with his knife. Thor turns and hands it to him. "I'll say I saw it."
Loki takes the cloth and winds it slowly around his cut. "You believe me?" Loki asks this because he used to have nightmares. About Mother. About angels.
Thor looks at him and his eyes go soft. "Of course I do. But I'll tell Father I saw it," he insists again.
Loki know what he's trying to protect him from: Father's constant ability to over-worry. Odin'll lock him in a closet again with all sorts of symbols on the door. Thor's giving him a chance to be a part of this hunt. "Thank you," Loki whispers.
"Now go to sleep," Thor replies, pushing at his head playfully.
Laughing, Loki sits down on the couch. They both know Loki won't actually sleep, but he'll have to pretend when Father gets there. Like always, Loki doesn't want to spend another long night in the closet.
Turns out Loki actually did fall asleep, because he wakes to the soft sound of Thor's voice echoing from the kitchen. The sitting room is pitch black because Thor had taken the candle into the other room with him.
"And you're sure of this?" Odin says lowly.
"Yes," Thor hisses back. "I saw it. In the trees out there."
"And where was your brother when this happened?"
"I don't know. Not at home," Thor lies fluidly. "We have to hunt for this thing."
There's a pause and Father sighs heavily. "Looks like it. But you're staying here, with your brother." Thor is silent so Father continues, "Watch out for him, you hear? Make sure he does his duties tomorrow, no matter what."
"I got it, Father," Thor answers quietly. "I'll watch him."
Loki close his eyes, feeling frustrated once again. Thor isn't going to let him out of his sight now.
He's roused awake by Thor shaking his shoulder and Loki swats at his hand, mumbling for him to leave him alone. "You need to get up," Thor sighs. "We need to get to work."
Loki opens his eyes specifically glare at him. He hates when Thor calls their chores 'work.' To him, work still symbolizes jobs from the old days like accounting or carpeting. Work should not mean washing the village's crusty old clothes on the side of the river. Or in Thor's case, babysitting annoying kids while everyone else did their own crappy chores.
"Just get up," Thor laughs, nudging him one more time before leaving the room.
It's dawn, so Loki stumbles off the couch and finds his way somehow into the bathroom. Next to the unusable sink is a large bucket of water. Loki dunks the cup into it and uses his cupful of water to wash off his face. Afterwards, he stares at his reflection in the mirror. He has incredibly dark hair in comparison to Thor's blond locks and his eyes are a much darker shade blue, edging on a dark shade of green. But what overwhelms his otherwise normal face is that awful scar. Its jagged edges prove how deep the cut went and how badly it healed. Father said it should have healed better than this. It's strange.
Loki turns away and leaves his reflection behind. But he does takes the time to grab a blessed blade and slips it into his boot.
Thor and Loki slowly walk through the small village along the edge of the fence. The chain-link fence has dozens of symbols carved into each post, protecting them from an angel invasion. "So you'll be okay out here by yourself, right?" Thor asks as they reach the river. Already a few of the people are in formation, washing the clothes with home-made soap in the riverbank.
"I'll be fine," Loki says, looking up his brother's worried frown. Loki nudges him. "Really. As long as Father is looking for the thing, it's fine. He's out right now, right?"
Thor nods. "If anyone can catch the angel, it's Father."
Loki's not so sure about that but he nods. "Well, I better get to it." Even as Loki says these words, he winces. Loki hates laundry beyond anything else; maybe more so than angels.
Thor smiles sympathetically. "I'll come pick you up afterwards, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." Loki gives him a wave and he leaves him to join the others at the water. His job in this production line is to rinse the clothes.
Swishing a shirt back and forth in the water, Loki lets his mind wander. He's 100 percent positive that there is an actual angel out there. Is Father taking this as seriously as he said he would? It makes him feel antsy that no one may be worried as he is. Loki bites his lip, frowning as he pulls the cloth from the river and wrings it out with more strength than necessary. He sighs loudly and dumps the shirt into the bucket to be hung up on the ropes.
His sigh has the others looking at him, but Loki ignores them, moving on to the next shirt. For a while the familiar rhythm of washing clothes lulls him away from his thoughts of angels and his mind flits around aimlessly. That is, until a movement in the trees causes him to freeze.
"Did you see that?" Loki asks. The few around him fall into silence, following his gaze into the swaying branches. All that is beyond the fence is shadows and Loki doesn't see anything else.
Penelope, a 40-something childless widow, frowns and scoffs. "He's lying. Go back to work."
Loki shoots a glare at her but she has already turned her attention faithfully back onto soaping a weathered red blouse. Glancing back at the trees, Loki grows wary. There has to be something out there. And what if it's the same thing that attacked Mom? What if we don't kill it in time? These questions haunt him.
"I'll be back," Loki announces suddenly, hopping to his feet and dropping a sopping wet pair of pants into the bucket. He don't even wait for their reactions, he just marches away.
Loki has to find out for himself what's out there, so he heads away from the river and towards a piece of the fence that is left unseen behind the first of the houses boxed into the gated village. Loki spots Thor and his group of kids at the top of the hill but he's busy playing a game of hopscotch with them. He won't even notice he's gone.
Slipping behind the first house, Loki is met with the steady clink of the wind on the metal fence. Back here, away from everyone else, he suddenly feels afraid. Cautiously he steps forward, squinting at the trees, searching for a figure. "Where are you?"
Loki almost expects the angel to show itself but nothing moves except the shaking leaves. He reaches down into his boot and brushes the blessed blade. It's cold and solid in his shaking fingers.
Breathing in unevenly, Loki glances over his shoulder. Behind him is the silence of the empty house. Okay, I can do this. I can just take a peek and be back before anyone notices. The guilt doesn't go away, though.
He goes to the fence and wraps his fingers into the chain, rattling the fence further while Loki hoists himself upwards. He makes the eight foot climb and finally he swings his feet over the top. For a second, he hesitates, suddenly feeling the familiar creeping sensation of someone watching him. But nonetheless, Loki pushes himself off the top of the fence.
When his feet hit the ground, instantly his heart pumps rapidly and Loki knows something is wrong. Something is out there, just waiting for him to wander a little closer. "You're here, aren't you?" Loki whispers, trying to appear threatening. He takes the knife from his boot and holds it out in front in him, trembling.
There's no answer and the feeling hasn't gone away, so Loki scans the trees, but the clinking of the fence is distracting. It sounds ominous.
When Loki takes his first step forward, the situation finally dawns on him. He's out there alone with only a knife. "Crap," Loki breathes.
A branch moves overhead and Loki gasps, jumping back a step. "Come any closer and I'll kill you!" Loki shouts, turning the knife so he can stab easily.
But then someone laughs. It cuts off just as quickly.
Loki freezes, frowning in disbelief. It sounded like a boy's laugh.
"Alright… who's there?" Loki asks, resisting the urge to lower his knife. Angels don't laugh. "It's not funny, you know."
The branch stays still and there's no answer so Loki takes a few steps to the left to get a better look up into the tree. In the dark shadows of the tree is a guy but Loki can't see what he looks like. The only reassuring thing about the guy is that he has no wings. "What the hell are you doing up there?"
The guy lowers a hand from his mouth and reveals his grin. He thinks he's so damn funny! "I could have killed you! You shouldn't be outside the fence!" Loki says, irritated.
"Neither should you," the guy counters. He looks like a Cheshire cat by the way he crouches on the branch doing nothing but grinning.
Loki huffs. "Get down here."
"No, I don't wanna."
Loki stares at the guy in disbelief. People may not always believe what Loki have to say, they may think that he's cursed from the scar on his face, or they might even hate him for no apparent reason, but they never disobey him when he tells them what to do. His Father's the leader of the Hunters for cripe's sake!
"Who are you?" Loki asks, his suspicion renewing as he stares up at the figure.
The guy shifts and jumps down, landing in front of Loki. He looks unbothered by the fact that he'd just leapt off a branch that was considerably higher up than the fence. Standing, he smiles again and Loki finally gets a good look at him. He has chocolate brown hair with the eyes to match and his smile screams charisma. "You're Loki," he says, disregarding his question.
Loki's never seen him in the village. So he takes a step back, his heart thumping wildly. "Who are you?" Loki repeats.
The guy's smile disappears and a shadow passes over his eyes. "I'm the one who will kill you."
Loki sucks in a breath, drowning in terror, and he does the only thing he can think of. Loki slashes his knife at the boy in full force, aiming for his haunting eyes, but the boy disappears and reappears a few feet away, closer to the tree but this time with wings.
"Angel," Loki gasps out. Hate consumes him and Loki wants nothing more than to rip his throat out.
The angel laughs again but this laugh sounds forced. "You actually think you can hurt me?" He disappears and reappears in front of Loki, inches away. "You are amusing, Loki."
Loki screams with rage and thrusts the knife towards at his shoulder.
He catches Loki's arm in his grip easily, and looks at the knife tipped towards his plain black shirt. "A knife like that won't kill me, just stun me at best." He shoves him backwards and Loki hits the fence at full force, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
Luckily, Loki still has the knife in his hand and he forces himself upwards to face the angel. There's no chance against him, not at this rate, and the angel knows it too. On his face is a look of triumph, like it means the world to him to kill Loki. Loki's fingers twitch.
"It won't work, I already told you," the angel says, but his eyes are on the knife, his whole body tense. So maybe it will hurt him.
Loki lunges at him again and he catches him, encircling his large hands around Loki's skinny wrists to hold him still. His gaze on the knife switches back to Loki and he grins. "You can try it. Stab me anywhere you want and I'll prove to you how vulnerable you really are." He drops Loki's hands and takes a step back, beckoning him. "Come on."
He glares. This has to be a trap… or he's completely serious. Loki just can't tell.
"Come on, don't be shy. Be a good boy and stab me."
Loki grips the knife harder, realizing that he can't pass up this chance. Maybe if Loki stuns him, he can get over the fence before the angel can react.
He goes for it. There's no resistance as Loki plunges the knife into the angel's wing with as much hate as Loki can muster. The knife goes through the wing and the wound not only starts to bleed, but the feathers around it start to droop and turn from white to a diseased black.
Loki jumps back as the angel stumbles, visibly shocked by the damage on his wing. He grunts from the pain.
Quickly he gets away from him. If he's right, Loki has only seconds until the angel recovers. So Loki throws himself onto the edge of the fence and clambers over the top. When he drops down to the other side, he looks back. The angel hardly moved.
"What did you do to me?" he rasps. The look he gives Loki just then actually makes him feel bad about stabbing him. So much pain in that expression.
The angel's figure disappears but he reappears only a few feet away, and he looks worse. His face is as white as a sheet and the blood is still flowing from beneath the knife. Then he collapses.
Sucking in a breath, Loki grabs the metal of the fence. Is he okay? Did Loki kill him? The thought of killing him almost feels wrong.
But the angel's already trying to struggle to his feet and from the new view of his wing, Loki can see that the blackness has grown along the majority of its span. Soon it will be completely black.
He glares at Loki one last time and disappears. This time, he stays gone.