#39
"Bruce?" Steve asked, his eyes silently pleading with the scientist, who only let out a frustrated sigh, his shoulders sagging in defeat. "What can we even do at this point? Even if we …" Bruce's gaze searched for Steve's. "There is nothing we can do."
"There's always something we can do," Tony assured him, even if his voice did not sound as convincing as he had probably intended. "We're the fucking Avengers."
"As if that still means anything," Bruce sighed. "Isn't that what you said ten minutes ago? And you're right. Our days of glory are definitely over. I didn't want to believe it at first but the evidence was there from the moment I set foot onto Earth again."
Tony blew out a breath.
"And now," Bruce continued with a glance at Thor that articulated the same distrust with the same trace of repulsion that had flickered across his expression when the others had picked them up on the ice floe in the middle of the ocean—but magnified tenfold. "Now we have lost our tower of strength." A sad laugh escaped his lips and Thor's legs grew weak. "You were our rock, Thor. You always cheered us on. When you arrived in Wakanda with the Stormbreaker, you gave us all hope. You gave us something to believe in."
Tears sprang to Thor's eyes, blurring his vision. He wanted to say something that would stop his friend from firing those looks of disappointment and repulsion at him but the words dried up in his tight throat and he choked on a sob instead.
"But then you betrayed us to that evil creature, fired a lightning blast at Tony inside a goddamned plane, lied to your own brother after calling him the worst brother …" Bruce's voice trailed off.
"I am going to close the portal now," Wong's voice came from the other side of the gleaming ring.
Bruce gave a nod, mouthed an apology at Steve and Tony and then slipped through the sparking orange gateway followed by Clint and Natasha, who seemed the most desperate to be away from Thor's presence. The portal closed behind them with the soft hiss of magic, plunging the room into an eerie stillness.
"We're so fucked," Rocket pointed out once again and moments crawled by in suffocating silence after this assessment before anyone said another word.
The silence became so unbearable that the world around Thor turned upside down, forcing him onto his knees. He greedily gulped for breath but his lungs seemed to have shrunk to the size of pinheads. He was dimly aware of Valkyrie's hand on his upper arm as she slid down beside him, murmuring something in Asgardian that did not reach his ears through the thick veil of panic and pain enveloping him.
"Alright, calm down, okay?" Tony's voice rang out somewhere beside him.
"I-I wanted to w-wait for the p-perfect moment," Thor stammered, the words vibrating on his erratic breaths. "I n-needed s-some t-time to bring h-him a-around. If I-I had told h-him right away …"
"He would have lost his shit," Tony finished for him. "Yes, we get that."
"It's not as if he didn't lose his shit anyway though," Rocket commented pointedly.
"I think we all need to calm down," said Steve and even in his state of blank despair, Thor figured that the other man was reflecting on the choices he had made for Bucky Barnes when he continued. "What's done is done and I think we can all agree that Nebula was right. As long as we haven't been faced with such a choice ourselves, we should not pass judgment."
His words of reassurance, reluctant though they were, calmed Thor enough for him to be able to draw a breath at last.
"Okay, so how much more time do we have left?" Tony asked.
"Twenty-one hours and forty minutes," Valkyrie replied softly.
"Why did Bruce say that we cannot fight Hela?" Steve continued. "If Wong came back, couldn't he just open a portal for us to Niflheim, so that we could surprise her?"
Valkyrie shook her head. "We fought and killed her before and she is still here. That's not gonna do us much good. Apart from that, even if we defeated her," she added, "it would not release Thor from his bargain."
"How is that even possible?" Tony mumbled.
"She is the Goddess of Death," Thor explained, the memory of her icy-blue stare when she had forced him to agree to the new bargain burning itself forever into his mind. "She cannot truly die because she has a pact with death—"
"How can you even have a pact with death?" Tony cut in. "What is death exactly, in your weird mythological cosmos? A deity?"
"A force." Thor coerced another breath into his lungs. "Like power or time. It is just there, in the form of energy, but it has its own—"
"Just to be clear," Rocket cut in, his sarcastic façade finally crumbling a little, "what is going to happen to us if we don't fix this? How are we going to … die? How is she going to come for us? Is it going to be … painful?"
Thor winced at the fear in the rabbit's eyes. "We will not let it come to this."
"No?" asked Steve. "Then what are our options, exactly? How did you think Loki was going to help you?"
Thor froze when he realized that he had not wasted any thought on this either. Again, he had just silently presupposed that Loki would figure it out in the same way he had always maneuvered their warriors out of the most intricate situations on countless battlefields with his cunning and his magic. And even though every conversation with Loki could best be described as an attempt to diffuse a bomb within ten seconds without knowing which wires would cause the explosives to blow up in his face, Thor was suddenly overwhelmed by a fierce longing for his brother's company.
"The only way to get out of that bargain is to offer her something she would want more than Loki's soul," Valkyrie replied for him when Thor remained silent. "I mean, what she does is …" She paused and searched for Rocket's gaze before she reluctantly answered his question. "When Odin banished her, he proclaimed Hela the ruler of the dishonored dead, a task she is to fulfill in life and death alike. While she dwells inside her kingdom, she draws her strength from the souls that travel to her, feasting on the evil and terror and darkness inside of them. The darker and more twisted the soul, the stronger she grows. With all that is going on inside Loki's mind, well, I think you're getting the picture."
"So, all we need to do is find someone who is more delusional?" Tony asked. "Is that what you're saying?"
Valkyrie cast a semi-apologetic look at Thor before she nodded. "I think that's what I'm saying, yes."
"Thanos," Nebula whispered. "His soul is more twisted than anyone's. He took control of Loki's mind and instilled the delusions there. Doesn't that mean that they're ultimately his own?"
"But Thanos is already dead," Thor reminded the cyborg. "She probably possesses his soul already."
"There must be thousands of beings out there who whose minds are fucked up," Rocket exclaimed. "Hell, there's an intergalactic prison for the mentally deranged on Sovereign. We could break in, scoop up a few prisoners and present them to her."
"Okay, now you're being ridiculous," Tony reprimanded him, but not without a flicker of compassion in his hazel eyes.
Rocket narrowed his eyes at the engineer. "I'm kinda panicking here, okay? I don't wanna end up as food for some soul-eating goddess."
"But this is personal," said Thor. "We cannot just give her a random soul in exchange for Loki's. She has a score to settle with him. He was the one who released Surtur and kindled the fire that burned Asgard to the ground and likely killed her."
"Because you told him to," Valkyrie added pointedly.
"Because my father told me to," Thor defended himself even though he knew that he was solely responsible for Asgard's destruction and that its destruction was the true reason for why Hela wanted his soul as well.
"Not to mention that she wants the stones too," Steve noted, his face twisting into a grimace of such pain that Thor felt his intestines clench up yet again. "Including the one in which the people we are trying to save are currently being tortured."
The room lapsed into silence once more as the others took this in.
"The stones aside, do you really think Loki would be able to find someone whose soul Hela might value more than his?" Nebula asked eventually.
Valkyrie gave a half-shrug. "Possibly."
"And there's no way you could bring him back?" Steve asked.
"I wouldn't even know where to start looking," Thor admitted and the disappointment in Captain America's eyes drove another dagger into his heart. "But it doesn't matter. He's gonna come back. I know this, Steve. You saw that he has changed. He will not let you all die after he saved your lives. Have a little faith."
"Faith," Rocket grumbled. "Sure."
"The stones," Tony suddenly exclaimed. "Of course! That's how we tracked him down six years ago, right? By tracing the gamma radiation emitted by the Tesseract! F.R.I.D.A.Y., call Banner!"
I cannot believe you really came back here, the dark voice continued its relentless, nerve-jangling prattling. Here of all places! Was there truly no other place in all the Nine Realms you could think of?
Loki's entire body itched to answer the foul fragment of his mind that had kept him such faithful company during the darkest days of his existence but he forced himself to remain silent. Not that it was easy. He knew that he had been doomed the second he had silently admitted to himself that he should have listened to it—that he had invited the intruder back into his mind like a scorned woman opening the doors to her abusive lover again—but he knew too that his mind also held the key to lock it back out. He just had to be resilient.
Resilient? How naïve! You are falling apart as we speak.
Loki surveyed the coast of Norway from where he was sitting on a rock near the cabin he had followed his brother to a few days earlier, tears burning hot in the back of his throat. A weak, trembling chuckle escaped his lips when he recalled that his very first impulse when Hela had released him and he had looked straight into Thor's eyes, feeling his brother's hands on his shoulders, had been to wrest himself free and crawl back to the pain and the drainage because the pain was familiar. When Thor had made his speech about belonging, his words lulling Loki into some sense of—false?—security, he had thought himself safe for the moment while simultaneously trying to persuade himself that it would not last. That whatever this was, it would only be temporarily. That he would go back, one way or the other. Yet somehow, things had taken a turn for the better and he had foolishly allowed himself to believe that this time, things could truly work out. He could neither comprehend nor explain why but for the first time since he had learned about his true parentage all those years ago, he had felt mostly at ease in Thor's presence since they had rejoined forces. By all the Realms! His brother had assured him that he did not think him weak. He had defended him in front of the assembled Avengers. He had chosen him over them multiple times. He had expressed a sincere interest in his sorcery skills. That could not have been all a lie, could it? Surely, there must be some kind of explanation—
There is no explanation. He betrayed you, snarled the dark voice. He bargained away your life! He clearly does not care whether you live or die!
Loki buried his head in his hands, trying to stifle the sobs that were building up inside his chest.
Go on, cry, the voice growled. Cry as you always do, you pathetic little wimp.
No, he would not cry. He only had a little more than twenty-one hours left before Hela would come to reclaim him and he needed all his energies to concoct a scheme to save his life. He could not afford to break down now. He needed to think. The Aether was already stirring inside of him, gnawing on the seal of his protection spell now that his mental defenses were beginning to crumble. He needed to think so badly but his mind was drawing a blank and he was still so incredibly hungry.
You really thought you did not need me anymore, the dark voice continued cheerfully, scathingly. You thought you could have your try at heroism, earn their gratitude and finally be free of who you really are. How pathetically childish is that?
"Stop," Loki finally relented, his voice hoarse with the tears he was holding back. "Just stop."
It did not. It never did. They do not care about you, Loki. No one ever did. Not your fathers, not Thor, not the Avengers, not Tony Stark. When will you ever understand that no one cares for you the way I do? I protected you. I kept you safe. I made you strong. Thor is the one who betrayed you; who lied to you; who condemned you to death. The only reason he brought you back is because they could not defeat Thanos without you. They would have traded your life for those of their friends without blinking as much as an eye!
The tears were flowing freely down his cheeks now, every fiber of his being aching with the betrayal of his oh so virtuous brother.
See? You cannot trust them.
"I cannot trust you either," Loki whispered as he came to realize something that had never occurred to him before even though it was blatantly obvious now that his subconscious had connected the dots. The dark voice had always tried to make him believe that everyone hated him but there was one person whose love and loyalty it had never called into question. "You need to go."
And what will you do without me, hm?
"Seek the advice of the only person who ever truly cared for me," Loki replied. "Which is not you! You are not even a person. You are nothing but a product of my mind and you will leave! You will leave now!"
The voice growled in protest but it fell silent eventually when Loki turned his attention away from its foul counsel and towards the memory of Odin, who had sat down with him and Thor on the same coast shortly before his passing. Your mother, she calls me. Do you hear it?
Loki gulped as he thought of the words Thor had said to him a few days ago. I figured that if there was one place that might give us some closure, it would be the place of our ancestors. Maybe there's something more to this than we actually had time to think about.
Maybe, Loki conceded, his brother had been right. Could it really be a coincidence that he had retreated to Norway after Thor's betrayal only to realize that the dark voice had never once made him question the love of his mother?
Loki shot to his feet and opened the pocket dimension containing the Infinity Gauntlet with the Soul Stone on impulse. He reached for it, pulled it out and turned it over in his hand. After what the Soul had done to Tony Stark, he knew better than trying to touch the stone. He sat back down on the rock, gently placing the gauntlet on his knees. He was under no illusion that he was strong enough to command the Soul Stone after all the magic he had wielded earlier that day but he knew that he must try, for he was utterly lost and painfully aware that any decision made in his current state of rage, confusion and despair would only bring more destruction in its wake.
He closed his eyes, focusing his own magic on the signature of the Soul Stone, silently willing it to release the spirit of his mother. Even though Frigga did not reside in the Soul World like those poor creatures the Avengers had lost, the stone still ruled over the energetic manifestation of a being's essence that people across the universe had come to refer to as the soul. Since its powers were limitless, Loki figured, they would reach as far as into Valhalla. The Soul resisted him with all its might, as he thought it would, and as weak and hungry as he was, he would have given up if the fierce longing for the comfort of the one person whom he was sure would never betray him had not fueled his strength in a way he had thought unthinkable.
After a few moments, the Soul relented and the air molecules around him began to shift, sending waves of energy hurtling past his face. Loki rose, his heart almost beating out of his chest as the gauntlet slipped from his trembling hands and fell onto the grass with a soft thud. The invisible molecules began to take form, glimmering in a faint orange, and then morphed into the shape of Frigga.
Loki was instantly reminded of his nightmare and her festering face with its cold, dead eyes and the snakes creeping out of them. He gasped for breath, tears welling in his eyes.
"Loki!" Frigga exclaimed as she rushed towards him. Before he could utter a single word, she put her arms around him and swept him into a tight hug. For a moment, they merely stood there, locked in an embrace long overdue, Loki weeping against his mother's chest.
Eventually, she loosened her hold on him, her hands traveling to his upper arms and squeezing them gently. "How did you do that?" asked Frigga, an expression of curiosity mixed with pride flickering through her blue eyes.
How did I do what? Loki wanted to ask but as soon as he had voiced the question in his head, he realized what she meant. She was not merely a spirit. She was almost corporeal. He glanced at the Soul Stone locked inside the scorched Infinity Gauntlet and his shoulders shrugged almost of their own accord. "How am I supposed to know?" Loki asked on desperate chuckle, a tear tickling his cheek. "It is not as if I have access to half of what is going on in my mind."
Frigga smiled at him and the warmth in that smile nearly undid him. "I am so sorry," Loki hurried to say, almost choking on the words. "I should never have … I never meant to …"
"It was not your fault, Loki," Frigga said softly, her hands cupping his face and tracing his razor-sharp cheekbones before her fingers caught a strand of his hair, twisting it absentmindedly. "I was destined to die that day."
Loki could not find his voice.
"Odin and I have lived our lives. It is your time now," said Frigga. "Yours and Thor's."
"But," Loki stammered, words still failing him.
"After everything that you survived, you still doubt yourself," she continued with a sad smile. "There is so much strength inside of you, Loki. Just look at me." She grabbed his shoulders once more and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "You brought me here. There is so much you can do, so much that your brother can do, so much that you can do together, and yet you both still struggle to accept who you can be."
"But Thor …" Loki's voice trailed off.
"I have seen everything," Frigga continued, absolving him from having to tell her what had transpired. "Thor made grave mistakes and a lot of them. So have you. So have all of us. But your brother would never want you to suffer. He would never want anyone to suffer. The only reason he agreed to that bargain is because he truly thought you would set this right." She smiled. "That you would set it right together. He needs you, Loki. Right now, you are the stronger one and he has so much faith in you. And so do I. It is about time that you have some faith in yourself."
A new stream of tears flowed down his cheeks. "What am I supposed to do?"
Frigga smiled, her own eyes glazing over. "You know what you are supposed to do."
Loki gulped. "No, I don't. How am I supposed to know? How am I even supposed to know who I am or what my role in all of this is?" He had never consciously considered these questions before but now that his mind had latched onto them, they took on a life of their own. "I have failed at being Laufey's son, I have failed at being Odin's son, I have failed at being a hero, I have failed at being a villain; I have failed at everything."
"That is because you have always tried to be someone you thought you were supposed to be," Frigga said softly. "I have tried to make you see that when you were still a child but you never listened to me. The measure of a person is not how well they succeed at being who they are supposed to be but how well they succeed at being who they truly are."
"And what would that be?" Loki asked, inwardly listing all the things he heard the Avengers say about him within the past few days. You really are crazy. You are still a liar with an unstable mind who makes decisions on a whim that benefit only yourself. A psychopath to fight a psychopath. Icicle's mind over here comes up with stuff that might turn out to be quite useful if we scrape off all the layers of crazy.
"First of all, you are my son," Frigga replied with a smug smile. "Which should make everyone tremble before you," she continued in a mock growl that elicited a genuine laugh from him. "But you are also a powerful sorcerer who is both Jotun and Asgardian, combining the strength of both races within himself. You are a shapeshifter and"—she flicked a glance at the gauntlet lying at their feet—"as it turns out, a wielder of all six Infinity Stones. But most importantly, you are Loki, and while you might still think of that as a curse, I think of it as a blessing. Embrace your chaos, my love. Turn it into something spectacular instead of something destructive and you will see that you have not been cursed but truly gifted with that mind of yours."
Her words lifted a weight off his chest that had sat there for so long that he had forgotten he was not supposed to feel so restless all the time. Loki smiled through his tears, savoring the love she still felt for him, had always felt for him, despite everything he had done. But with the emotional relief came exhaustion and the mental power he wielded over the Soul Stone began to dwindle. Frigga began to fade. "But what am I going to do?" Loki hurried to ask. "How do we stop Hela or Nemesis? How do we—"
"You do not need to stop Nemesis," said Frigga. "You need to find her."
"For what purpose? And how are we—"
"I cannot tell you that," Frigga interrupted him softly.
"Why not?" Loki asked warily. "Father told Thor to destroy Asgard, no? Why can you not grant me the same favor?"
"Because Thor was at a loss but you, my son," Frigga said, her hands cupping his chin for the last time, "you already know the answer."
Loki swallowed when he sensed what was coming next. "So, this is goodbye then?"
Frigga gave a nod. "Thank you for this."
"No, thank you, Mother," Loki whispered, suddenly remembering their last conversation. "You are my mother. You always have been."
"I know," Frigga mouthed and pulled him into a final embrace. Loki held on to her, reaching for her essence, trying to absorb a trace of her signature into his own magic.
"I am proud of you. Both of you. Tell your brother that if you can," she whispered and, then, she disappeared, leaving Loki with nothing but empty air between his fingers.
"Goodbye, Mother," Loki whispered, his faint words trailing away like smoke dispersing into the air.
Author's note:
- I originally had every chapter between 3k and 3.5k words but now they are somehow getting longer. My OCD doesn't really like this fact but maybe you are so absorbed in the story that you don't even notice. In that case, just ignore my perfectionist comment.
- Credits for this chapter have to go to Akira, who suggested to me that Loki might summon Frigga's spirit for counsel. I had originally planned to let him figure it out all by himself but I think, it turned out much better this way and who would be foolish enough to pass up an opportunity to write Frigga into a story? I certainly welcomed it after the Dark World AU I published last week and I hope you did too. So, thank you, Akira, also for inspiring the line about every conversation with Loki being like trying to diffuse a bomb, which is spot-on.
- One last little thing: Clint and Natasha following Bruce to Wakanda might seem weird considering that Shuri said only those who would not condemn her soul to hell were still welcome in Wakanda and Nebula basically exposed Clint by saying he would have done the same thing, but I think Clint is really still in the mindset to blame Thor and Loki (and now Valkyrie) for everything because his grief prevents him from seeing clearly and, well, Nat would follow him.
- I also enjoyed writing Rocket losing his shit at least a little after he has been one of the only ones to keep his cool through all of this so far.
- That said, see you soon (I hope). Much love xxx