Disclaimer: I do not own Thor.
Paint on the Walls
Darcy felt it.
The shift.
Like the worlds shuttered, heaved, overturned, shook, changed—a multitude of of ideas, but she still couldn't put a word to the feeling.
She had just landed in the observatory, feet firm on the ground. She looked at Sarai to make sure the travel still didn't bother her. The girl was looking around the beautiful observatory, and Darcy dimly noted that they hadn't been here since Sarai was a little girl.
Dimly, because the rest of her mind was already noting the feel of the air.
Like the beginnings of an idea that you can't fully form, or a concept you have only just begun to grasp—and then it was gone, but Darcy was left with the change and the sudden urgent, pressing need to cry. She looked at Heimdall, who was stoic as ever, and Rai, who briefly paled, but otherwise did not seem to notice.
So she swallowed her words, and her tears, and led the way across the bridge. She learned the art of silence from Loki.
Her feet made bright pings of light as she walked across the colored ice. The salt wind threatened to throw the little mortals off. Heimdall watched, and ensured that they were safe.
And Loki, in his hole, the pit of the worlds, shuddered, but did not cry.
…...
Thor was pleased, as always, to see them. Jane smiled in the way that warmed Darcy's heart, making the mother feel like a child again. A child in need of Jane's hug.
"Dear sister!" Thor's booming voice and feet allowed Darcy to return Jane's smile. "It's been too long! Come, sit and eat with us. We were just talking about next week's adventure." He waggled his eyebrows at Rai. Sarai laughed a little and held on to the thought that he always spoke in exclamations.
"Thor, why don't you take Sarai to the stables?" And then, shortly after loud steps and growing laughter faded, "Darcy, what happened?"
She explained, Jane nodded, and they went to find Frigga.
…...
Loki, in his hole, by the roots of the Tree, withdrew his hands from the water. He stared at them, as if they were foreign to him. And, in a way, they were.
The palms at the bottoms of his long fingers were bleached white. The lack of color faded back into his skin tone in a misty edge along the sides of his hands. The inside wrist of his left hand, however, had a three inch bleach stain running where his blood pumped from his heart to his hand. Veins. Close to the skin. Left hand. Hand best for magic.
He flipped his hands around, checking to see if the veins in the back of his hands were affected.
His mind was gone, momentarily, as he looked at his hands. He would have stood like that forever if Sven's boots hadn't creaked when he walked over to his father.
Loki breathed through his nose. Curled his hands in a ball. Stuffed them into his pockets.
Breathe through the nose. Steady emotions.
Try to forget.
The image of the aftereffect of the giving—white-bleached hands—burned in his mind.
Try to forget.
But the image stained. White under the writer's ink stain of the middle finger of his human right hand—
Try to forget but, oh—breathe—that's a part of him gone, white/bleached/lack of color—
Left hand, god hand, more white—
"Dad?"
And suddenly he could breathe again, and he didn't forget, but remembered why he gave up the small speck of Self. ("Small speck," he would later tell Darcy. "A small part of my being. Even smaller when compared to my son.")
But his hand's were still in his pockets and it would be a few years before his skin turned back to its proper color.
"Let's go." A nod, and they walked away from the pond.
And the tree laughed.