in which Epic Shit goes down (or…y'know, went down…thousands of years ago…in a universe far, far away…).
so this is the story of how Loki destroyed Asgard. the title is part of a line from the Demons Run poem.
i feel like the pacing needs something more to happen between getting flung off Gallifrey and arriving in Odin's throne room, but this is what Fifteen!Loki tells me happened. "norly, i was all 'ohnoes!' and the Norns were like 'get lost, gurl,' and then i woke up here and SHIT WAS GOIN' DOWN."
warnings: AU - Fateverse. sci-fantasy with myth references. Doctor Who crossover. Rule 63. evil!Odin. brief violence and gore. character deaths. language: g.
pairing: none/gen.
timeline: circa NO 1000 (AD 3636) or shortly before, when the Founder was still fairly active in setting up and tending to the Network.
disclaimer: marvel owns all the characters, i just made more alternate universe versions of them.
notes: 1) the title is from a line of the Demons Run poem: "Demons run, but count the cost; the battle's won, but the child is lost." 2) according to Norse myth, the Norns (the Norse wyrd trio, like the Greek Fates) dwell among the roots of Yggdrasil (the Worlds Tree); Urd has a well there that feeds the tree, and in its waters she and her sisters can see the destinies of all. Urd governs the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld, the youngest, governs the future. 3) "demons flee before him" is another Who reference. 4) Idunn's golden apples were the Aesir's source of everlasting life, like the celestial peaches of Xi Wangmu (a Chinese goddess). 5) Loki's 'spell of unmaking' is probably some Bad-Wolf-esque channeling of Vortex energy that made itself at home in her body while the Norns were making her stare into the Schism. 6) "when a good man goes to war" is yet another Demons Run reference: "Demons run when a good man goes to war."
visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal 64465. html) for terms and concepts, and The Fateverse Appendix (lex-munro. livejournal 64565. html) for Nodes, branches, and important people.
But Count the Cost
This time, Loki is desperate for counsel when she seeks the Well.
"Again she comes!" cackles Skuld.
"Again and again and again—" begins Verdandi, over the younger Norn's shrill laughter.
"Stop," says Urd.
And Skuld and Verdandi fall silent.
"We are on the brink of war," says Loki. "Three whole Realms, and they talk of using a fourth for their battlefield. A new Great War."
"Ah, war," sighs Skuld.
Verdandi begins to mutter under her breath.
"And what did you do to avert this?" asks Urd. "What course took you, green-eyed pilgrim? What violent, spear-shaking hand did you stay? What heed took you of the parable of this dead place?"
"Father didn't listen," Loki says tersely. "He never listens."
"And what of his wife?"
"Nor to her, even in her most beseeching voice."
"The minds of men are simple," snorts Skuld. "So very rarely does a man both see and hear at once. Too far afield looks he, and this is why the words of his women fall on deaf ears."
Urd rubs at her knees as if they pain her. "Ah," she says. "War."
"Is there no way to avert it?" Loki entreats
"No," says Skuld.
"Ah, war!" cries Verdandi, before returning to her muttering.
"Yes," says Urd.
"Tell me what that way is," Loki demands.
As one, they turn on her; she discovers that Verdandi has been saying 'again and again' in a relentless mantra.
"Would you gaze into my Well?" Urd asks, and her voice roars like fire and whispers like silk and cuts like a knife.
"You may mislike what you see," warns Skuld.
Loki tries to look, but cannot. As ever, her eyes slide away like water from a duck's back.
Urd grasps her face in gnarled hands (when did she come so close?) and holds her, and her eyes focus on the storm-swirled blackness partly eclipsed by Urd's shoulder.
Loki sees her father on a throne made of the corpses of children. She sees a shadowed form of great power strike Odin down so powerfully that Yggdrasil itself is rent.
"No—" she gasps.
"Do you see it?" Skuld purrs in her ear. "Do you see the new-sprouted branch?"
There. Just as the shadow-thing moves to strike, she sees herself stay its hand. She erases Asgard with a flick of her wrist. Smooth. Elegant. Exact. Free of the unbridled emotion that would have split the Worlds Tree. And the shadow-thing subsides.
"Please," she says, because her eyes have begun to blur and her mind is burning.
The Norns laugh at her.
"We saw what you would do," they say. "And though you resisted for a time, you return to your fate at last!"
Skuld covers Loki's eyes. "Do you understand what fearful thing it is you've seen?"
"The Storm," she replies. "The Storm that Ends Worlds."
"It is said that demons flee before him," says Verdandi.
"And it was he who showed the workings of the Well to those crawling ants on Midgard," adds Urd.
Loki's mind spins. The Worlds-Ender is the Founder. Are the Midgardians more worthy, then? Or is there something wrong with the way the Norns mete the knowledge they gain from the Well? Is there something wrong with the way the Aesir choose to act on that knowledge? But there must be, of course, if Odin builds an empire with the deaths of the innocent…
"You have seen the choice that lies before you," says Skuld. "And when you ride to meet the Storm, you will know why."
"Go now, Realm-Slayer," says Verdandi.
"With our blessing," finishes Urd. "For no matter how beloved the branch, if it falls to rot it must be cut to save the tree."
"Go," they say together, and they shove Loki off that red-gold world.
She wakes in Idunn's orchard, groggy and disoriented. With war looming, the apples have gone unharvested, and the grass is littered with black-spotted gold lumps. The place smells of sweetness and decay, a stifling sort of irony when the gleaming fruit provide such strength and lasting life to the Aesir.
There is no way for her to know how long it has been since she left to see the Norns.
"Loki!"
She stands when her sister calls.
"There you are!" Thor is running toward her, golden hair streaming behind like a banner. "Loki, please!"
"Peace, Thor," she says, but knows her sister cannot be so easily calmed.
"You must stop him—he won't listen."
"I have been to Urd's Well."
Thor gapes. "Then you bring back the Norns' wisdom in this? What say they?"
"They have shown me something. I hope they are wrong."
"Come, Loki, we may already be too late; it's taken me three days to find you. Father has set his mind to something terrible."
She lets Thor pull her through the palace halls, running hand-in-hand as they did long ago in their youth, the golden floors singing their footsteps back to them.
When they reach the throne room, they slow.
Odin sits, a folded missive in his hand that no doubt relates battlefield intelligence. At his feet is a grand box filled with tiny, blood-soaked hearts. Beside the box sits Frigga, sobbing.
Loki knows right away what has happened. These hearts will be the power behind a grand spell of some kind. Whose children were sacrificed is unclear, since several of the races are constructed so similarly. It matters very little to the one who will come to avenge them.
Thor goes to their mother, but Frigga's weeping cannot be soothed.
Odin has sealed his fate, and the fate of all Asgard.
"You should not have done this thing," Loki says softly.
"A king does what he must to save his people, girl," Odin dismisses, still poring over the creased report of enemy numbers and positions.
"Then you have either a very poor idea of what it is to be a king, or a very poor idea of what will save a people."
"You dare—"
"She's right, actually," says a stranger's voice.
Loki spins to face the newcomer, so swiftly that a lock of hair catches at the corner of her mouth.
He seems so…harmless. So unassuming.
And Loki knows who the stranger is.
The Storm that Ends Worlds. The man the Network calls Founder.
He is tall, yes, but willowy. A lithe thing in awkward Midgardian clothes, barefoot, hair falling in mussed curls. To Loki, he resembles nothing so much as a wild young boy stretched tall and wearing someone else's clothing. He bears no weapon, but Loki's mage-senses tell her that he walks with enough power to bend all of Yggdrasil.
To come before his enemies unarmored and unarmed… What a gentle creature. Worlds-Ender the Norns named him, but he is not made for killing. This is why she must do it for him.
"Odin Borrson, King of Asgard," the man says, and he looks so disappointed. "Your people had such potential. You could have been great. But you wanted more. We gave you the ability to understand the speech of other races and be understood in return, and you use it to hurl threats and insults. We gave you a way to traverse the stars, and you use it to steal from your neighbours. We gave you tools the likes of which you had never dared dream, and you use them to slaughter innocent children."
Odin says nothing, has not even the shame to look guilty in the face of such accusations.
The Worlds-Ender strides slowly nearer to the throne. There is a storm as furious as his namesake in that pale gaze. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?" he asks. "Were you really so arrogant that you thought you could just do whatever you liked?"
Loki fetches Thor, tugs her away from their parents.
"Children," snarls the Storm. There is thunder in his voice, and rain from his eyes. "Children!"
"A sacrifice willingly given!" roars Odin. "Their parents were proud to give them up, and now they have become a sacrifice for the sake of Asgard's safety."
With a wordless bellow of rage, the Storm raises an object that Loki doesn't recognize.
And this is the moment.
She grasps his shoulder gently. How strange, that he should feel so frail and mundane and transient beneath her palm, like a human.
He hesitates.
"You have seen all of Time," she says. "Surely you saw this. Surely you saw what comes of it."
He draws a shaking breath.
"And for what? For this petty man who rules a petty, warmongering people? I or my sister could try to take the throne, but it would not quiet their bloodlust. Nothing can quiet their bloodlust now. Ask them if they see what Odin has done, and they will praise him."
He flinches as though her words have wounded him.
"So I ask you now," she whispers, so softly that only he may hear. "In all that may ever come to be, have you seen in these hating fools anything worth saving?"
She watches him carefully, and oh, how alone he seems. More rain falls on the white plain of his face, but no more thunder rolls.
Loki takes that for her answer.
She gathers a spell of Unmaking, something dragged from the very depths of Urd's Well, fuels it with his anger and his sorrow—the strength of them is unlike anything she has ever felt, blasting through her like a whirlwind.
She sweeps away the blood-soaked souls of Asgard, and their world evaporates into glittering motes.
All that is left is Loki, and her sister, and the Worlds-Ender. They stand on a rough circle of gold, all that remains of Odin's throne room…all that remains of the once-great Realm of Asgard. All around them spread the stars, the many limbs of Yggdrasil.
"You didn't have to do that," he says.
"If I hadn't, you would have," she replies. "And here, now, the universe cannot survive your wrath." She doesn't admit aloud that she looks at him and can't imagine allowing him to kill.
"I never wanted this."
"And yet you know what would have been, otherwise—the fate of your own people. You are the Storm that Ends Worlds. When you do not, those worlds end without you, and far more messily."
"When a good man goes to war," he murmurs. He takes a little tool from his pocket, presses a button, and vanishes in a flash of light.
Thor is still staring at where their parents once stood.
"Let us go, Sister," Loki says. "There is nothing for us here; Midgard awaits us."
.End.