The Bifrost faded, leaving Thor and Loki standing in light armor on a featureless plain of snow and ice, shovels over their shoulders and coils of golden rope hanging from their belts.
"Forced bonding time on Midgard," said Loki. "What fun."
"Let's just find this fallen warrior," said Thor.
"That eager to be rid of me so you can get back to your adoring masses, are you?"
"No," said Thor, annoyed. He considered for a moment, then smirked. "Is there a reason I can't have my brother and my adoring masses?"
Loki rolled his eyes. Victory: Thor. "So where is this ship the warrior crashed?"
The ocean was just visible in the distance on their left, so Thor turned to the right. Heimdall had given him the final images he'd seen of Steven Rogers, and the Bifrost should have brought them no more than a mile from the spot. "There," he said, pointing to the largest raised mass of ice in the area. They started for it in silence, sinking into the snow up to their knees with every step.
"I'm sorry," said Thor.
"For what?" said Loki, sounding startled.
"For trying to take you to a healing room when you didn't need one. I saw you hurt and I stopped thinking."
He glanced over, realizing too late that he'd given his brother the perfect opening to insinuate that not thinking was his natural condition, but Loki only met his gaze and nodded.
They kept walking. Thor waited for Loki to speak, but he didn't. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"I apologized to you."
"And? I'm not going to apologize for stabbing you."
"What? Why not?!"
"Please. I stab you all the time."
"It's rude!"
"It's hilarious."
"Well it got old about five hundred years ago."
"Oh dear. I haven't become predictable, have I?" Something about his tone filled Thor with genuine apprehension, and it must've shown on his face, because Loki grinned. "Good. That would have made things terribly dull for me."
Thor scowled. Victory: Loki. "I'm glad you can find such amusement at my expense."
"Someone has to keep your head from growing any larger than it already is."
They had drawn close enough to the mass of ice now to be able to see two mounds of metal protruding from the ends of it, roughly eighty paces apart.
"Sif and Heimdall never stab each other," Thor muttered.
"Clearly neither of them has any sense of humor at all."
"Oh, I don't know, I found it pretty amusing when Sif dangled you over a bilgesnipe den by your foot. You really shouldn't have turned her sword into a snake."
X
The only parts of the Midgardian vessel that were completely clear of ice were the tips of the wings, which meant they had a lot of tedious work to do with their shovels to reach the cabin. Occasionally, Thor would break up the solid ice with Mjolnir, but for the most part they simply dug. It was dull work, if not particularly taxing.
This was not the first time Father had set them doing manual labor as punishment for fighting or getting into some kind of trouble, but being made to do it when they were two centuries past the age of majority was a bit humiliating. Undoubtedly that had been the point. At least it was for an honorable enough purpose that nobody was likely to make smart remarks about it.
"Where's Audhumla when you need her?" he said after they'd been at it for half an hour.
Thor chuckled. "Do you believe Great-Grandfather Buri really came into being when a cow licked him out of some ice?"
"No, I assume he merely got himself trapped in it, and told everyone that to sound more impressive," said Loki. "He must have got up to all manner of trouble before he founded Asgard. Personally, I think you take after him more than I do."
Thor grinned and tossed a handful of pulverized ice at him.
"Does this ice seem abnormally dense to you?" said Loki a few minutes later. By now, they'd cleared several feet of the stuff.
"No," said Thor. "Why?"
"I don't know," said Loki. "It's just a bit...odd." He looked around. When he'd pictured a downed aircraft that collided with an ice field at great speed, he'd assumed the sheets of ice that pushed over the top would all be angled in the same direction. These did not, and the area also seemed rather colder than the spot where they'd landed. Not cold enough to give them difficulties, but it still made Loki wonder.
He couldn't account for these phenomena at all, but he didn't have the chance to dwell on them further because Thor's shovel had just made a distinctly metallic sound. Loki hopped back into the trench they'd made and helped clear a spot on the aircraft's hull. They uncovered painted letters, which wouldn't have mattered to them, except that they eventually spelled die Walküre.
"'The Valkyrie'," Thor growled. "Schmidt makes a mockery of our history on top of his other crimes?"
"A pity he's already dead," said Loki. The Valkyries had all fallen in battle when he and Thor were boys. Most Aesir children had looked up to the elite warriors, Thor in particular, and he had been devastated. Odin had never reformed the Valkyrior after that battle. As yet, Sif was the only shieldmaiden of Loki and Thor's generation to come close to the combat skill of a Valkyrie—though having a half-brother whose mother had been one certainly gave her an edge in that respect.
Loki plunged a long dagger straight through the first letter and carved a circle into the hull, his Aesir blade cutting through the Midgardian steel like butter. Then Thor, face still full of contempt at Schmidt's presumption, punched the circle through with a single strike from Mjolnir. It crumpled around the hammer and fell to the floor with a clang. Loki conjured several balls of greenish-gold light and sent them inside. Thor dropped through the hole at once, and Loki followed.
The craft's interior was both spacious and ugly, all gray metal, bracers, and bolts, with ludicrous concave hexagonal panels along the ceiling. Loki wrinkled his nose at it and followed Thor down the angled floor.
"Heimdall was right," said Thor. "This is no fit resting place for a warrior."
The nose of the craft was surprisingly intact considering that it was mostly made of windows. Loki was perplexed, therefore, by the amount of ice that had gotten inside. He tested some of it with a dagger. It was more of the denser stuff like what they'd just been digging through.
"Here," said Thor, pointing. "Rogers's shield. He must be close. I hope his weapon didn't fall too far from him. It won't be a proper warrior's funeral without it."
"Did Heimdall mention a weapon?" said Loki.
"No, but why wouldn't he have one?" said Thor.
Loki opened his mouth to retort that there were plenty of ways to win battles outside of swinging big, obvious weapons such as Uru-forged hammers about, but then he remembered they were talking about a Midgardian, and their kind rarely had access to alternative means of fighting, such as magic. So he merely shrugged.
Retrieving Rogers from the ice proved more complicated than digging their way into the ship. Thor couldn't simply shatter the ice from around his body; damaging it further would defeat the purpose of giving him the honor of an Asgardian funeral. Instead, Loki used his dagger to test for flaws in the ice. Then Thor followed up with a tap on the dagger's hilt from Mjolnir. In this way, they gradually chiseled pieces off until they had fully uncovered the man. He, however, was also frozen solid, which would make him an awkward and unwieldy burden. Loki didn't understand it. After less than two full days in these temperatures, a mortal of this size should not have had time to freeze completely through. Particularly when he had been alive for several hours after hitting the ice.
"I still can't find any trace of a weapon," said Thor. He lifted the shield. Loki found the design on it (and Rogers's...was that armor?) rather tacky, but Thor didn't seem to have noticed. "This metal cannot be of Midgard," he said, frowning.
"What? Let me see that," said Loki skeptically. Thor passed it over. Weaponry was one of the rare subjects in which Thor was better versed than Loki, but it was clear to him too upon brief inspection that the shield was not made of any known Midgardian ore. "Curious. If there is a sword or spear to accompany this, it would be a travesty to lose it."
"There's nothing here but more of what Schmidt used," said Thor. "Perhaps Heimdall can give us a better idea of what we're after, and then we can return for it."
They carried Rogers carefully back to the spot beneath the hole. "Now...what do you suppose is the best way to do this?"
"Well, fly out with him and you risk breaking one of his limbs off if you misjudge the hole," said Loki. He kept the sarcasm in his voice to a minimum; judging by the amount of fidgeting Thor was doing, he was plainly already concerned about whether it was disrespectful to carry the frozen body of a great warrior about like a statue, even if he was only a Midgardian. "Better to use Mjolnir as a weight for the ropes."
Thor nodded. Loki gave him one end of his rope, and he took the shield and whirled Mjolnir to lift himself out. A moment later, he tossed the ends of both their ropes back down. One for Loki to haul Rogers up with, the other for him to climb. Loki swiftly set to work tying one around Rogers's chest. At this rate, they would be back in Asgard in time for the midday meal. Not a very long adventure at all. Thor must've been thinking along the same lines, for his grinning face appeared above the hole. "Do you think Father will be satisfied that we've learned our lesson if we return so soon?"
"I don't see why not," said Loki, beginning to hoist Rogers up to the hole. He was only barely shorter than Loki, but he weighed about as much as an Aesir child, so it was easily done. "If he thought this part would take longer than half a day, I suspect he would've had us pack more than shovels." Rogers was most of the way to the top when the hairs on the back of Loki's neck stood up. He stopped pulling for a second and squinted at the hole. "Is someone up there with you?"
"Of course not," said Thor, laughter still in his voice. "Why?"
Loki kept pulling. "I don't know." Rogers's head and shoulders reached the top, and Thor pulled him the rest of the way out. "I could've sworn I felt—"
Before he could finish his sentence or begin his own climb, there was a monstrous roar, a surprised shout, and then Loki had a brief glimpse of Thor being hurled out of view with enormous force.
Any guesses on what just attacked? :D
I will definitely take every possible opportunity to have Thor and Loki bicker like children. It's just so much fun. But, like Frigga said, they also make a pretty seamless team.
I like the idea of pre-character development Loki having a lot of respect for important Asgardian traditions like death rites for warriors, so it's something he tries not to be sarcastic about. I also wanted to make sure Thor wasn't the only one doing the heavy lifting. They both have super-strength compared to a human; Loki's just more inclined to use tricks than blows.
You may recall that Schmidt refers to his big Hydra ship as The Valkyrie. Since it makes no sense for that not to be in German, I'm using "die Walküre," and the boys can read it no matter what language it's in 'cause Allspeak. (I don't actually know any German, so if Google Translate did me wrong there, please let me know and I'll change it.) It's fun to keep giving Thor more reasons to hate this guy he missed out on killing.