Loki returned to the vault, hidden this time. As it happened, he need not have bothered with the disillusionment. He found a child waiting along the route, singing to himself, "Here I am/sitting in the street/waiting for the king to fiiiiind me..." He was also flipping a gold coin up in to the air and catching it again, over and over.

Loki stopped. "What would you say to the king should he find you here?" he asked, still invisible.

The boy offered a very un-childlike grin to the empty air. "I'd tell him we share the same name! And I'd ask if he would like to play hide and seek."

"Mmm-hmm. I am informed the king loves that game, in fact plays it constantly." He dropped his own disillusionment.

"Wow, you look just like your mother!" the child said mischievously, clapping his hand to his cheek.

"Indeed?" Loki said, grinning.

"It's uncanny."

"Hmm. Well, if you would like to play hide-and-seek, Loki of Utgard, might I suggest we hide in my room?" he suggested softly.

The child nodded and vanished. Loki could still sense his presence magically, but only if he tried. This other Loki was indeed an excellent illusionist. He walked back to his suite. As soon as he closed the door, the illusion field Loki of Utgard was holding expanded to encompass the whole room. Loki turned around to see a very old Jotun, not a child. The man was tall enough his head nearly brushed the ceiling, or at least it would have if he were not so bent with age. His skin and hair were both gray. His eyes looked young, though, and filled with mischief. The man bowed. "Loki Laufeyson, a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Loki's heart almost stopped at the moniker. It should not have surprised him, of course. He was Laufey's son. He was even glad to be Laufey's son. But it was still strange and jarring. Perhaps noticing his discomfort, Loki of Utgard smiled kindly. "Call me Ikol. I've been Loki so long, I could do with a change."

Ikol. Why not? Easier to keep straight than Asgard-Loki and Utgard-Loki. "Right. The pleasure is mine, Ikol."

"What is the situation?" Ikol asked as he sat down in the middle of the floor. To be fair, none of Loki's chairs would have fit him.

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Our truce still holds on this side. My brother remains on Midgard, and I regained control of access to the Bifrost, for now."

"For how long?"

"That depends on whether Heimdall is able to corrupt General Tyr's faith in me, or whether the Asgardian presence on Midgard becomes too dangerous to the humans. I had to leave Heimdall in the Observatory for that reason despite his treachery to my crown, under guard of course, but not gagged."

"Would Thor harm humans?" Ikol asked, looking vaguely disgusted. Like most immortals, Jotnar clearly regarded the Midgardians as basically children.

"Not intentionally," Loki assured him. "But there are four more dunderheads down there now, not to mention the Destroyer, which I sent to keep them in line."

"Ah. I wondered where it was when I didn't see it in the vault. Thank you for that. I was not looking forward to running away from it if it happened to notice me. You do not think the Destroyer a risk to the humans?"

"It shouldn't be. Its only orders are to prevent Thor's return non-violently. I needed a back-up in case Heimdall does regain control of the Bifrost. I suppose the risk is if it is attacked, either by the humans or by the Asgardians, and its self-defense programming overrides my orders. That should not be a great risk with mere human attacks, though, and I would hope my brother and friends would not be quite so foolish as to knowingly provoke it."

"I hope you're right. So... what do you want to do? Are we trying to preserve the peace or shall we fake our own deaths and get the hell out of here?" Ikol asked. "Either way is fine with me."

Loki smiled at his confidence. "If you have a way to preserve the peace beyond prolonging the ceasefire, I'd love to hear it."

Ikol shook his head. "Probably not. The ceasefire is indefinite while you're on the throne, but that changes the moment your brother returns, I'll wager. Which is going to happen sooner rather than later. There are too many variables outside your control running around on Midgard, and there are too many variables here once Thor gets back and the council look to him instead of you. If one person suggests a violent option, and Thor finds it appealing, then we've lost."

"Unfortunately, even though General Tyr and the council technically remain loyal to me, they are not actually interested in what Laufey or any other Jotun might have to say," Loki agreed sadly.

"I don't suppose we could wake up Odin sooner rather than later so he can bring your side into line?"

"That I do not know. I am not familiar with the nature of his affliction and would hesitate to meddle with it from what I have seen."

Ikol frowned. "We'll keep that in reserve, then. If we can think of no other peaceful solutions, I will take a look at him with your permission and see if there is anything I can do. Healing isn't my specialty per se, but I still know a fair amount." He snorted. "When you get as old as me, things start falling apart, so it pays to know how to put them back together."

Loki smiled slightly, then sighed. "We could look into a more limited peace deal than complete normalization of relations, I suppose. I might have more luck with that, and I could probably coerce Thor into sticking to it if it's a done deal before he has a chance to ruin things."

"Only if your ability to travel between the realms is preserved. You mother was very clear on that when she summoned me."

"I think I'd rather make Odin deal with it," Loki admitted. "If we can speed things along for him to wake up, that's great, we will do that. If we have to wait for him to wake up on his own, then our chief aim is simply to keep Thor away from here and keep stalling while we work on negotiations, futile as that may be in Odin's absence. And if Thor makes it back here, then we fake our own deaths and get the hell out of here, very, very, very dramatically."

"I like the way you think," Ikol said, grinning. "What drama did you have in mind?"

Fortunately, Loki had come up with a more coherent vision on his way back from the Observatory. "Oh, a great tragedy with much angst," Loki said. "Everything that can possibly go wrong during a regency. Madness, war, regicide, you name it."

"Plague?"

"Not plague, too slow."

"Damn. Are you sure? I make very realistic illusory pustules." Loki snickered. Ikol smiled, and they fell to hammering out the details of plans A, B, and C.

Laufey approved all three plans when Loki contacted her again via sending about an hour later. This was fortunate, as when Loki moved his sending back to Midgard, what he saw was a nightmare. The Warriors Three were fighting with the Destroyer in the middle of a human town. Humans were screaming and fleeing the scene. Fandral and Hogun boosted Volstagg to leap at the automaton, yelling in fury. The huge man bounced off the Destroyer, neither substantially harmed. Sif pounced on it from above, stabbing it with a spear through a gap in the armor. The blade went deep, and the flames of its engines temporarily guttered, until its backup system routed around the damage.

Meanwhile, the fight was in fact threatening both Thor and his human companions, one of whom had been struck with a large, twisted piece of iron debris. Where was Tyr? Loki thought frantically. He should be intervening... unless Heimdall was watching all this and not telling the General. Why? Waiting for the Destroyer to be defeated? He spoke out loud, knowing Ikol could hear him. "Go to Odin, now. Down the hall to your right. Two doors. Then prepare for plan C." He winced as all of the Warriors Three were blown off their feet. They were certainly stunned, but possibly much more seriously injured.

Loki ripped his consciousness away from Midgard and back to the Observatory. He was filled with anger to see Heimdall was just callously watching this, General Tyr none the wiser. The Watcher was even smiling as he gazed directly towards Midgard's sun. Loki made his sending visible, as well as very obviously mystical: translucent, glowing green and floating several feet off the ground. He did not know if either Tyr or Heimdall were actually aware of his skill with them, and there was no reason to make either of them think he could actually teleport at will between worlds or something. "General, I have just viewed the situation on Midgard personally. Heimdall has failed us. You need to extract Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three. We will deal with the consequences as they come." He did not wait for a reply before casting his mind back to Midgard. Norns, he was going to sleep for a week when all this was over. The spellcraft for sendings was not meant to be abused like this. What he saw now was not what he expected. Thor had wisely sent the others away, but he was now approaching the Destroyer completely unarmed and, for some reason, talking to it.

"Brother... for whatever I have done to wrong you, whatever I have done to lead you to do this, I am sorry. But these people have done nothing to you. They are innocents." Loki was confused. Clearly, Thor assumed the Destroyer was there to murder him, not just to keep him there, but did Thor think Loki had some kind of psychic link to the thing? If Loki had not been using a sending at the moment, Thor would be monologuing to absolutely no one. "Take my life, and know I will never return to Asgard."

"No!" Loki yelled, this time both out loud and via his sending. Thor was an idiot! The Destroyer was ordered to keep him out of Asgard, and now Thor had just told it to do so by killing him. He forced himself to breath, reminding himself he had also ordered the Destroyer not to slay anyone... if it could avoid it. The Destroyer hesitated, computing Thor's words more slowly than it should have, probably because of the spear-strike Sif had landed on it.

There was nothing Loki could do but watch as the automaton struck poor, foolish, defenseless, mortal Thor with one massive, metal arm. The blow sent Thor flying, and he landed in a broken heap. Loki's sending zoomed close. Still mindful of who was watching, Loki did not make it visible, but he folded Thor in his magic. His brother was still breathing. He would keep it that way. He concentrated on the most lethal damage to Thor's chest and plugged up all the bleeding holes he could find. Everything else was relatively survivable and could (hopefully) wait...

The Destroyer had other ideas, stomping ever closer and opening the visor for a fiery blast. In the end, Thor somehow saved himself. Loki saw it the moment his immortal vitality started to return. There was a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky... Loki smiled, released his own spells, and stopped watching. Thor would live. Apparently, worthiness was the willingness to sacrifice himself for his friends, or possibly for the mortals. Something like that. It was not quite the lesson Loki would have chosen to teach Thor, but it was a good one nonetheless. Loki came back to himself in his own room and crumpled to the floor, breathing hard.

The night was still young, unfortunately. He groaned and rolled to his feet. He slowly stumbled out the door and down the hall towards Odin's room.

Ikol laid a hand on him before he got there and whispered in his ear. "The Allfather should wake within the hour. I'll grant you it is a weird disease, though. If we ever do make peace, our healers should offer to help relieve your rulers of the affliction."

Loki nodded. "Thor is coming," he whispered.

"Ah... I will break in, then." He shoved Loki back into his own room and pulled the door quietly shut. There was then a great clatter and stomping out in the hall. Loki took a moment to catch his breath. He took up Gungnir which was still leaning against his wall, then opened the door again and looked down the hall to see the last of a squad of Jotun warriors entering Odin's and Frigga's royal suite. The guards outside were both slumped and unconscious, though not visibly injured and still breathing. Ikol had probably invisibly clubbed them from behind.

Loki heard Frigga's cries and rushed down the hall. He burst into the room to see Frigga staring up from the floor at a very convincing and also very terrifying phantasm of King Laufey, looming over Odin's bed. There were two other illusory Jotnar with weapons trained on the queen, and there were two illusory corpses. "It's said you can still see and hear what transpires around you, even in this state," phantom-Laufey said to Odin's sleeping form. "I hope it's true, so that you may know your death came by the hand of Laufey."

Loki stabbed forwards with Gungnir, conjuring a bright flash to mimic its powerful energy blast. Phantom-Laufey gasped and croaked as he fell to the ground, and twitched several times before finally lying still. Ikol was definitely a showman. "And your death came by the son of Odin," he spat. He aimed Gungnir at one of the other two illusions and pretended to blast it. It flew into the wall. Frigga stabbed the last one. It slid off her blade with a convincing physicality. Loki would never have guessed it was an illusion if he had not known and was not looking for the magic. Frigga certainly suspected nothing as she embraced him. She was shaking with adrenaline. He wrapped his arms around her.

The moment was brief, of course. Faintly, Loki heard the squall that signaled Thor's arrival. He was coming fast. Loki and Ikol had little time. He hardened his expression. "I swear to you, mother, they will pay for what they've done today. I will end the Jotun threat, now and forever!" He turned to Odin's recumbent form. "And I will make you proud," he said, with a deliberate catch in his voice.

Thor burst into the room next and stopped short. Whatever he had been expecting, this was definitely not it. Frigga beamed at him. "Thor!" She moved her embrace from one son to the other. Just as well. It gave Loki the chance to surreptitiously touch his boot to phantom-Laufey and both reinforce and modify the illusion such that it would hold this shape for a full day before slowly turning to ice and melting away. It was a trick Ikol had taught him barely an hour ago, and Ikol was presumably doing the same for the other bodies.

Loki looked at Mjolnir in Thor's hand and found himself smiling. "Found its way back to you, did it?" he asked.

"No thanks to you!" Thor said angrily.

"What?" Frigga asked, confused and unamused by the tension between her sons.

"Why don't you tell her? How you sent the Destroyer to kill our friends? To kill me?"

"It must have been enforcing Father's last command," he said reasonably, careful not to allow his burgeoning glee to show. It did not matter what he said now. He was leaving, and he found he was excited to be leaving. "I only told it to keep you on Midgard."

"You're a talented liar, Brother. Always have been."

"It's good to have you back. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to destroy Jotunheim."

"What? No!" Thor cried. Odd, Loki had not expected that. It did not matter, though. He was committed now. There was no going back. There was no telling Ikol to go back, since the Jotun was no doubt on his way to the vault at this very moment. Loki leveled Gungnir and actually blasted Thor with it, just enough to knock him off his feet. And through a wall. Possibly two. The God of Thunder would be fine.

"Loki?" Frigga murmured, fearfully.

"Shh..." he said, and smiled. "I don't belong here," he told her. "I never did. But I'll make sure you all are safe." He stepped forwards and kissed her cheek and walked from the room.

He had two sleipna saddled and waiting in short order. Ikol announced his presence with a blast of cold air followed by the disappearance of one of the animals. Loki flicked his reigns and cantered off towards the Observatory. The beauty of the eight-legged beasts was that no one would think from the sound there was more than one of them; they always sounded like there were more than there were. He encountered General Tyr halfway along the causeway, looking very uncertain of his choices in life. He had Sif and the Warriors Three with him, but not Heimdall. Thor must have already asserted his command in that respect.

"Halt!" Sif cried at the sight of him, brandishing her sword.

Loki allowed his expression to be wild and worried and shook his head as he raced closer, barely slowing down. "No time. Jotunheim has attempted to assassinate the Allfather! I need to speak with Heimdall, assuming he will speak with me!"

"Make way!" Tyr yelled at once, and his company parted to let Loki through, overruling the objections of his wayward officers. Loki laid a silent blessing on the man as he passed.

Loki jumped off of his sleipna as soon as it skidded to a stop at the end of the causeway and stalked into the Observatory. "You!" Heimdall cried. "What are you doing here?" Ooh, Heimdall really hated him now.

"Following through on my princely duties," Loki told him angrily. "If you had been watching more than just Thor, you might have noticed the strike team Laufey brought to assassinate my father!"

"I... what?" His eyes went distant and snapped towards the palace, and then widened. He saw the fake corpses, then.

Loki snorted derisively. "The Allfather lives, no thanks to you, Watcher." He brushed past Heimdall, plunged Gungnir into the Bifrost mechanisms, and adjusted it for Jotunheim. Specifically, he adjusted it for the most stable point in the atmosphere above Jotunheim. It was a point both he and Ikol could survive from falling with magic, but it was high enough that prolonged contact with the Bifrost beam would not actually endanger the planet, at least not for several hours, which was more than enough time for a sane person to come turn the thing off again. That's not how it would look to Heimdall, though. As soon as either Loki or Ikol gave the signal, ten more illusionists would be conjuring the appearance of quite cataclysmic seismic activity on Jotunheim, all for Heimdall's benefit. Loki hoped he enjoyed the show.

"What are you doing?" Heimdall finally asked.

"As you said...was it just yesterday? Leaving the Bifrost open too long will expose Jotunheim to its full power and destroy the planet," he said harshly.

Heimdall stared at him. "I... misjudged you."

"Will you stop me?" Loki inquired. It would be convenient if he would, but they very much had to confirm. If Heimdall proved insane, either Loki or Ikol would have to stay behind, for now, and find an alternative way home (they had several in mind, including two more enchanted coins).

"I..." Loki pushed Gungnir deeper into the mechanism, fully engaging it. The beam ignited and flashed towards Jotunheim. "You're mad." Heimdall finally declared. Loki grinned widely. They were in luck. He moved his hand in the preplanned gesture to signal Ikol to leave first, with the Casket of Ancient Winters. Loki conjured an illusion of the casket suspended between his hands and mimed some kind of great spell-casting with it while Ikol used the real one to freeze the controls in place. Loki technically could have done that himself, but he did not really know enough about the casket or his own ice-magic to use it for something this delicate. He would have produced an impenetrable block of ice rather than the impressive but flaky and superficial coating Ikol crafted. The ice would melt soon enough, or Heimdall could always break it.

Loki flung his illusion of the casket into the Bifrost beam. "There. Let them have it back. It will do them no good."

Moments later, Heimdall's face grew truly fearful as Ikol's and the other sorcerers' distant illusions started on Jotunheim. He would be seeing ice and stone break apart, mountains pitch and roil... "You're mad..." he repeated, sounding both impressed and fearful.

It was then that Thor decided to join them. He slammed onto the deck with a clap of thunder, staring at the Bifrost beam, and then at Loki. Loki was elated to see him. This would be better than forcing Heimdall to push him into the Bifrost. Much more poetic. "All these years, and no one's ever dared to use it as a weapon," he said conversationally.

"You..." Quickly, Thor looked at Heimdall, then back at Loki, then at the Bifrost beam, then at the frozen controls, then back to Heimdall. Heimdall nodded.

"You won't stop it," Loki continued. "The Bifrost will build until it rips Jotunheim apart."

"It's already happening!" Heimdall said. He raised his sword and leveled it at Loki. Strange how he was so cautious, when Loki had deposited his own weapon, Gungnir, into the Bifrost. He was ripe for attack. Perhaps Heimdall was afraid of madness, afraid of what he did not understand.

"Why have you done this?" Thor asked, flabbergasted.

"To do what Father never could," Loki explained patiently, wondering why they continued to hesitate now. He would make them strike at him soon enough, though, once he had made himself fully into Thor's dark mirror. "To destroy their kind forever. When he awakens, he'll see the wisdom of what I've done."

"He won't! You can't kill an entire race!"

Loki raised an eyebrow. "You would have killed them all with your bare hands."

"I've changed!" Thor said.

"Oh? Have you changed so much, in so little time?" he pulled out a dagger and flung it at Thor, who dodged easily. "Then strike me down, Brother! Fight for anarchy as you always do! I do this for Asgard! This is the only way to ensure the safety of our borders." He absolutely delighted in throwing Thor's own words right back at him.

"Is the throne really worth what you've done? What you would become?"

Loki laughed. "The throne? I never wanted the throne! I wanted to be seen as your equal, but most of all I wanted you to be better than you are, for you to think of anyone and anything more than of yourself! We would not be in this position if you had swallowed your pride when Father told you to!" He realized then that Odin's plan for Thor was actually concordant with his own, it was just simpler in its lesson. Odin wanted Thor to put others' lives before his own. Loki wanted Thor to put others' wants and needs before his own. The distinction was important. There was far less glory in sacrificing one's time, energy, resources, and honor than in sacrificing a life, but that was what Thor must learn to do if he was ever to succeed as a king. That kind of sacrifice might seem more mundane, but it wasn't. Perhaps Thor had changed, perhaps he had learned, but Loki would teach him again, in a way he could never forget.

"Loki, this is madness," Thor said.

"Is it?" he grinned and bounced another knife off of the ice encasing the Bifrost controls. Either Heimdall or Thor could break through it easily if they tried hard enough, but both still hesitated to do so with him standing over it. Thor was just reluctant to hit Loki. Heimdall's hesitation was a mystery, though. "This is what you wanted, Thor. This is the end of the war. This is final victory. This is what they deserve after what Laufey tried to do-"

"Laufey has already paid, with his life!" Thor protested. He paused, and Loki knew why. That was precisely what Odin had told Thor down in the vault about the two dead Jotnar intruders. Loki fought back his own smile when he saw the light of resolution in Thor's eyes. Thor raised Mjolnir. Loki summoned an illusion of himself and, invisible, stepped out of it and started running towards the Bifrost, knowing neither Heimdall or Thor would notice his shadow in their distraction. The illusion stepped in front of the Bifrost controls to block Thor. Thor let his hammer fly, striking the illusion squarely in the chest. The illusion flew backwards, surely further than Thor had expected or intended. Loki guided it into the Bifrost beam and jumped in after it. It was better this way, to "die" with just one hit from Thor's hammer. It would show Thor in no uncertain terms how easy it was to hurt people if he did not control himself. Maybe someday, he would see Thor again and apologize. And apologize to Odin and Frigga too... but not today.

He appeared high in the sky over Jotunheim and immediately began falling earthward. Jotunheim was looking rather like Helheim at the moment... until he passed through the surface of the great illusion that spread across the planet for many miles. He spread his limbs to steady his fall and glanced behind him. He grinned when the rainbow light of the Bifrost vanished from the sky, leaving only the scent of ozone and a strangely hot rain for the ice planet. A gust of wind cushioned his fall. He did not even have to summon it; Ikol and Laufey were there, guiding his gentle descent.

Ikol whooped when he touched down, and Laufey hugged him. "Welcome home," she said.

Author's note: from Thor's perspective, this story so far has played out almost exactly as it did in the movie. That's the benefit of a whole race of illusionists. After all, if the mythological Utgard-Loki can make the World Snake look and feel like a fluffy kitten, a whole group of illusionists working together can certainly make part of Jotunheim look like Mordor. Sadly, none of Loki's and Ikol's plans involved actually checking with Thor to see if he would be interested in cooperating in the peace-brokering, because Loki did not actually expect Thor to change, at least not much and not permanently. Hence, Loki was honestly surprised that Thor was so staunchly opposed to his voiced plan of destroying Jotunheim. And so, they are denied the happiest of potential endings.

Story's not over though!