It took Loki most of his childhood to realise quite how skilled he was at hiding.
Of course, by the time he was nearing five hundred, he had noticed that whenever the children of the palace played hide-and-seek, he was always the last to be found. But he was always found. And Thor was always the one to find him, with a laugh and a groan and a punch in the shoulder and a story he'd thought up or a little gift he'd found along the way. It seemed clear enough that the others just didn't like him enough to try.
He'd been left behind entirely, a few times, when Thor was away with Father and it was just him and Sif and Fandral. He'd waited, and they'd never come. The last time it had happened, he'd found them sparring in the gardens hours later, and they'd stared at him in exasperation as if he were the one who'd ruined the game.
Why would you wait so long? Were you really still playing, all alone?
They hadn't quite laughed at him, not out loud. But he'd heard it all the same.
Loki had wished he could swear never to speak to them again. But there weren't many children in the palace, and almost all of them found him strange, so if he kept making oaths whenever someone laughed at him then soon enough it would just be him and Thor, and Thor always wanted more friends.
Loki didn't really see why Thor needed so many friends when the two of them got on perfectly well alone, but he didn't want to argue over it. Thor was his best friend, and his brother, and the other children could smirk and stare and whisper all they liked but they couldn't compete with that.
Even when Thor did grow bored of searching for him, he would find a way to cheat. He never left Loki behind.
When it was just the two of them, though, without anyone else to get in their way, hide-and-seek was one of Loki's favourite games.
He knew he was good at it. He always won, no matter which part he played. Often, when Thor was the one hiding, Loki could sneak up on him from behind and pounce, knocking him to the ground. Of course, that always ended in wrestling, which Loki always lost. But he still felt proud to have found Thor. It felt like performing a magic trick, or like he'd read Thor's mind.
Hiding was a little different. He didn't have a puzzle to occupy his thoughts for the whole duration of the game. Instead, he had a few short minutes to shuffle the cards and to dare Thor to read his mind, and then he had to curl up in his hiding-place and wait.
Loki was good at waiting, just as he was good at being quiet, at squeezing into small places, at knowing where people wouldn't think to look. His father had once said that his patience would make him a great warrior one day. (Then Thor had said, "That's why he's going to be my advisor, when I'm king," and for a moment Loki had been sorely tempted to push him in the river – but then Thor had tossed him a proud grin, and he couldn't help but smile back.)
Loki was good at keeping secrets – and what's more, he was good at being the secret. It felt good.
For once, he could be the centre of attention for a better reason than being the bad example in fencing lessons, which only made Thor think he could teach him better, or falling prey to seasickness (or heat-sickness, or any other sickness only he ever caught), which risked Thor, nauseatingly, trying to look after him.
Loki could be the one with the skills his brother could never hope to match, and Thor could be the audience. And he could do it without a dozen other eyes crawling over him, making him fear he'd fumble the words he'd thought so clever a moment ago, so he never ended up saying them at all.
As long as Thor was searching for him, he could be alone, without really having to be alone.
On the day that Loki learnt how easily he could disappear, he was tucked into a shadowy corner of the rafters of the western banquet hall, watching a spider spin its web in a narrow shaft of sunlight.
He'd already heard Thor run through the hall once, sweeping the walls for servants' doors and tapping for loose floorboards. He'd had to bite his knuckles to keep from laughing, or throwing something at his brother's head. But he'd kept quiet, and Thor had left, apparently without looking up.
He'd be back soon enough. There were only so many hiding-places on any given floor of the palace, and they had a rule that forbade using the same one twice. (A rule which Loki was waiting for the opportune moment to break, but it hadn't come today.)
In the meantime, Loki made the most of the quiet.
He could hear footsteps all the way up the corridor, so whenever it was quiet, he was free to explore.
He walked along the rafters with his arms spread out like wings and leapt from beam to beam like a cat. He spun on the spot, practicing his fencing footwork, and flipped upside-down to hang by his knees. He crossed to one of the narrow skylights to watch the eagles swooping over the city and the ant-like people scurrying far below. On a lower floor, he might have found servants to eavesdrop on or a kitchen cat to befriend, but up here, there were only the spiders and the birds.
He studied the walls for carvings or hiding-places, lost treasures, secret passages. (In the palace, there was always a chance.) He cast an illusion of a butterfly and made it flutter between his fingers, counting to see how long it would take to fade away. He made up a story to tell Thor when he found him, then told it better, then discarded it and started again.
Loki liked having breathing room. He liked being reminded of how it felt to miss his brother, without the sting of Thor being invited somewhere he wasn't. And if it took Thor forever to find him, that only proved that he was trying. Maybe it was a good thing that no-one else ever came back for him. Maybe he only wanted to be found by Thor.
But the sun sank to the horizon, and Thor did not come.
Loki tipped his head back and glared at the ceiling, trying to beat back the panic clawing at the edges of his mind. He strained to listen for footsteps – any moment now, surely, he had already waited so long, it couldn't be more than another few seconds yet – but the silence just stretched on and on. Nothing to hear but his own lonely heartbeat and the sigh of the wind.
Which must mean that it had finally happened. Thor had grown bored of him. And whatever he'd presumed being Thor's brother to mean, he'd been wrong. There was no unspoken pact, no unbreakable bond, nothing. Of course there wasn't.
He'd been so stupid – why wouldn't Thor leave him behind? Everyone else already had. Loki would barely even have known the other children if Thor hadn't insisted on dragging Loki along behind him wherever he went, in what Loki had imagined to be loyalty but now realised must have been obligation, or pity, or sheer thoughtless habit. (Whatever it had been, it was gone now.)
Thor was probably with his other friends now, his real friends. Loki wondered when he'd given up on the game, then he wondered if he'd even tried at all. He could hear Thor laughing at him. Worse, he could see Thor turning away, smiling at someone else, and forgetting about him entirely.
Rage rose suddenly in Loki's throat, like a sickness, like a howl. I hate you, he tried to think. I never wanted to be one of your stupid little lackeys anyway! I'll be glad to be rid of you, of all of you, and I'll find my own- No- I never needed any friends!
But he just wasn't that good a liar.
He clenched his fists so hard that his palms stung and his hands shook. He wanted to lash out, to hit someone, to drag his nails down their face like a wild animal and make them bleed, even if it only meant they hurt him worse in return. But he couldn't. He was alone.
He couldn't hold off the burning in his eyes any longer. He dropped his head onto his knees and began to cry.
Norns, he was so pathetic. So childish. What sort of prince wept because his big brother wouldn't join his game? Besides – what future king would want to spend his time crawling around in dusty rafters, like a servant, like a rat?
Loki was almost five hundred – more than halfway to manhood. Boys his age were meant to be better than this, but it seemed he was the exception. Always the outsider, no matter what he did. There was just something wrong with him.
Even Father liked Thor better. He wouldn't say it, but everyone knew.
Loki disappointed him, of course. That only made sense. No matter how hard Loki tried or even how well he thought he'd done, Thor always outmatched him in the end. But there seemed to be something else to it, too, something deeper that Loki didn't understand. Sometimes he thought he caught his father eyeing him side-on, like a dog that bit. And sometimes he was sure his father was avoiding looking at him at all.
But whenever he tried to ask about it, his mother would simply smooth his hair and tell him that he was imagining things; that he was clever, but also sensitive, and he had to trust his father better than his fears.
He was sensitive; he knew that. It was just another way of saying he was a coward.
He didn't want to imagine what his father might do if he saw him now.
Oh, Norns, what would Thor do?
What if Loki really had imagined everything, and Thor came back and found him wailing like a babe-in-arms for no reason at all?
If he hadn't already left Loki behind, he undoubtedly would then.
Loki let out a shaky, hysterical, helpless laugh, then bit down hard on his knuckles, trying to strangle his tears.
He had to pull himself together. He was being ridiculous.
If Thor didn't come, then… then he didn't come. Loki could whine about that when he knew it to be true, but he didn't know it yet. It had only been a few hours. That wasn't so terribly long.
Loki had promised that he would wait for Thor. He was supposed to trust his brother; one day, as their mother was always reminding them, the Nine Realms might depend on it. Even if Loki was weak, his loyalties had to be strong.
He couldn't be the one to break the promise. He couldn't walk away.
It didn't even matter if he believed Thor was still looking for him. Thor would never know. All Loki had to do was wait.
As the last of the daylight faded away, rain began to drum on the roof and the rafters grew draughty and cold. Loki curled in on himself, huddling deeper into his corner. Even though he knew he would be scolded for it later, he couldn't keep from biting his nails.
He wondered, distantly, miserably, if he were dreaming. So many of his nightmares ended like this: lost alone in some dark, cold, desolate place, weeping and pleading for someone to come back for him, someone who never replied.
But there was usually more snow.
No matter how many times he tried to stop it, his mind kept chewing over the same doubts; in Thor, in himself, in Thor again. And as much as he longed to be found, the more the dark drew in, the more he caught himself wishing he could just disappear.
In the end, it was his mother who found him.
She climbed up to his hiding-place more gracefully than any other adult could have, and sat across from him, studying him as she smoothed her skirts.
He wasn't certain what she saw. Not the worst of it, at least: he had run out of tears, and he wasn't chewing his nails any more. He'd already bitten them bloody, but thankfully the evidence was hidden, as he'd pulled his sleeves over his hands when they began losing feeling to the cold.
"It's almost midnight, Loki," his mother said softly.
Loki shrugged, though he knew it made him look sullen. He couldn't meet her eyes.
"Are you angry with your brother?"
The mention of Thor made him feel a little sick. He wanted to wring his hands, to curl up tighter, to close his stinging eyes. He stared at the wall instead. "No."
His mother made a quiet noise: not quite a tut, nor exactly a laugh, just – Hm. "Then why are you punishing him?"
Loki stiffened and looked up at her, wide-eyed. In a small voice, he said, "I… I was only playing a game."
His mother gazed at him for a second, then sighed, her eyes softening. "Why don't you come and have something to eat? We missed you at supper."
She put a hand on Loki's forearm. He stared at it, hesitant.
"Come, there's a slice of cloudberry tart left for you."
Loki swallowed. "Are you angry with me?" (It was always harder to tell with Mother. She did everything so gently, even rage.)
She squeezed his arm and offered him a small smile. "No, my dear."
Loki breathed out, then in, and asked quietly, "Is Father?"
"No." She smoothed back a stray lock of Loki's hair. "Come, Loki."
Huddled in his corner, Loki had grown colder and shakier than he'd realised. He almost slipped as he climbed down, but thankfully, his mother didn't seem to notice.
He wasn't just shivering; he felt shaken all the way through, like he did after a fever, and he could feel a headache building behind his eyes. He hoped he hadn't made himself sick. He didn't need any more humiliations today.
Forebodingly, although he knew he should be hungry, he wasn't. His guts seemed to have tied themselves in a knot. He couldn't look at his plate without imagining the meal without him, his mother's eyes skipping over his empty place, his father's gaze resting proud and undivided on Thor, a voice in the back of his mind hissing that this was how it had always been meant to be. He could only make himself pick at his food before his mother sighed and sent him to bed.
Loki halted outside the nursery. His mind revolted, like a stubborn horse simply refusing to move forward, and he had to bite down on his tongue to make himself open the door.
Inside, he found Thor.
Thor had been pacing up and down between their beds. The rain was battering their window, and when Thor looked up at Loki, his face was stiff and serious.
"Brother," Thor breathed, then charged forwards.
For a split second, Loki was certain Thor was going to strike him.
Thor had never hurt him unprovoked before; he'd even sworn, once, that he never would. But it still made sense. Part of Loki had always known it was coming.
Somehow, Loki managed to keep himself from trying to flee or fight back. He'd learnt by now that showing cowardice or insolence would only make things worse. He didn't even close his eyes. He just ducked his head and waited for the blow to land.
But instead, Thor threw his arms around him, knocking the breath from Loki's lungs.
It took Loki a moment to understand that he was being hugged. His brother was very warm, and, despite the prickle of static, steady. Loki was being crushed a little; one of Thor's hands was clamped tight on the back of his neck. But nothing was bleeding. Nothing hurt. He felt, if anything, less shaky than he had before.
Then Thor pulled away, grabbing Loki by both shoulders, and Loki realised he had forgotten to hug him back.
"I searched for hours," Thor said urgently. "Were you trapped somewhere? Were you hurt?"
Loki shook his head, not quite able to make himself speak. Thor's eyes were sweeping over him, looking for wounds that didn't exist, while his own gaze had caught on a fresh, livid bruise on Thor's cheekbone and wouldn't shift.
"So what happened?" Thor demanded. "I called for you! I called and I called and you didn't answer!"
Loki flinched involuntarily. "I didn't hear," he said, but he knew even as he said it that it was a feeble excuse. Voice weak, he made himself confess, "I- I thought that you'd forgotten me."
Thor blinked, uncomprehending. "Then why didn't you come and find me?"
"No, I thought…" Loki swallowed, there was a jagged rock in his throat. He'd been so certain half an hour before, yet it felt cruel to even say it, now. "It doesn't matter."
Thor frowned, and his grip on Loki's shoulders tightened. "Where were you?"
"In the rafters of the western banquet hall."
"The whole time?"
Loki nodded.
Thor let out a breath. "I looked, but I didn't see you." His voice wavered slightly. "I thought I was alone."
"I was there," Loki said quietly. "I was waiting for you."
Part of Loki's mind urged him to apologise, but he kept quiet. If he started, he wouldn't be able to stop, and he would only sound pathetic, like he was begging Thor not to hurt him, when he had shown no sign of wanting to. It would be an insult. He would be giving Thor more reason to be angry than he was taking away.
"Well," said Thor at length, "you win." He let go of Loki's shoulders, but not without giving them an exasperated shove. "Never do that again."
Loki barely resisted rolling his eyes. Thor was always playing at being an adult, when in truth there were barely four decades between them. "Of course not, Father."
"Loki."
Loki held up his hands in innocent surrender. "I swear."
Thor did roll his eyes – in fact, he tipped his whole head back, half annoyance, half exhaustion – but he snorted a fond laugh too. "Good. Thank you."
Then Thor flopped back on the end of his bed, pulling Loki down with him by the hand. Loki felt a rush of relief at the easy warmth of the gesture, then a flash of panic when he remembered his bloodied nails. He tried to tug his hand away, but when Thor snatched it back without looking, Loki – foolishly – winced. Thor's eyes narrowed. He held Loki's hand up between them, turning it over, taking in the carnage.
"Are you in trouble?" Thor asked seriously, after a moment.
"Only with you." This was an attempt at levity, but it fell flat. Loki couldn't help the apprehensive edge creeping into his voice. "But you are, aren't you."
Thor frowned at him in question, and Loki glanced meaningfully at Thor's bruised cheekbone. Thor's eyes widened.
"Oh. No. Well, yes- I was fighting with Sif, so Father had me confined to our chambers without supper."
It took Loki a moment to swallow all that. "Sif? Why?"
"She said you were staying hidden on purpose, to spite me." Thor flashed him a grin. "Don't worry. I knew she was wrong."
Loki smiled back weakly.
Thor squeezed Loki's hand – gently, this time – then slung an arm around his shoulder. "Have I ever told you about the time I saved a crashing starship using only a horseshoe, a mead-horn, and a jar of kraken spawn?"
"Of course not," Loki said with exaggerated weariness, "because it never happened." He leant his head on Thor's shoulder and almost smiled.
This was a game, and the absurdity was the point. The storyteller, doing his best imitation of General Tyr, would come up with the most outrageous boast he could think of, and the listener would mercilessly interrogate each and every hole in his logic, which the storyteller had to plug with yet more obvious lies, until he reached the end of the tale or they were both laughing too hard to carry on.
Thor's tale that night was especially good – he must have planned it out while they'd been separated. Loki's stomach twisted with guilt and embarrassment when he pictured that happening while he had been so utterly convinced of being forgotten, but he didn't let it show.
The brothers laughed and traded stories for the rest of the night. Loki spun Thor a braggart tale of his own about making a wager with Death herself and winning, and every time he made Thor laugh, he felt a little lighter. Thor leapt up at the end of that story to tell Loki a related legend he'd been reading, sweeping and slashing his hands in mimicry of battle, and he beamed and told Loki: One day we're going to do great things like that. (We, like it was nothing, like their concurrence went without saying.) And after a servant had stepped in to blow out all the candles and gently chide them to go to sleep, Loki told Thor a ghost story in whispers and made the shadows dance and flicker up their walls. Thor wasn't scared, of course – but still, his eyes turned round and bright with fascination, and Loki tried not to look too smug about having his full attention at last.
But Loki never did tell Thor what he'd feared.
He didn't point out that Thor had come to blows with his second-best friend and been punished by their father for it, all in defence of Loki, when Loki had been the cause of the trouble, and yet had somehow slipped the blame.
He didn't tell Thor that he could not convince himself that he was worthy of Thor's loyalty, but he took it anyway, hoarding every little gesture to turn over in his mind like a dragon counting its gold.
He didn't tell Thor that only hours before he had been wishing he knew how to hate his brother, daydreaming of making him bleed and cursing his name.
He didn't tell Thor that everyone else was right about him, that he was strange and wrong and different, and he didn't understand why. He didn't tell Thor that he was only pretending to be like him, to have moods that passed over him in moments like clouds parting after a storm, while the truth was that it all just clung on inside him, festering into something foul and unrecognisable, and he didn't know how to make it go away and he didn't know what it was doing to him.
He would never, could never, tell Thor that sometimes he thought there was a monster hiding inside him. That the fault, the rot, the weakness their mother called sensitive and their tutors called soft was anything but. That whenever he tried to push down his fear like he'd been taught, it only grew more vicious, like a cornered animal, trembling and writhing sickeningly inside him as it grew into rage and self-disgust and seething jealousy. That it terrified him, and the terror only made it hungrier; that he felt it gnawing on his ribcage even when he had no reason to be miserable, and he didn't know how much longer he could keep it from breaking out.
He truly couldn't tell him; there was no use in trying to say it. Even if he didn't burst into tears, he would sound mad; Thor would never believe him. Or worse, he would. And, despite the stubborn, desperate hope still tugging at Loki's mind, there would be no reassurance, no understanding, no secret firstborn wisdom that could teach him how to fix himself and make it seem easy. He would just be alone.
So Loki swallowed the words like he always had, though they were bitter as bile in his throat. And he curled up beside the brother he didn't deserve, hands twisted together in his lap to keep himself from clinging.
Perhaps Thor would ask, one day, and perhaps, by then, Loki would have found a way to answer. But for now, he had to stay quiet.
Even when he failed at everything else, Loki was good at being quiet.
More than five centuries later, Loki sat on the broken throne of Asgard and watched his brother walk away.
He'd thought it might be a relief, to see his brother fade into the distance once again. To let go. He'd miscalculated.
Yes, he was falling; he had let himself fall. But somehow, after everything, it still stung that Thor had not tried to pull him back.
A childish part of him revolted, wailing and beating its fists against the locked doors of his mind: Don't leave me. You left me in the Void to become a tyrant's plaything. You left me caged in the dungeons without a whisper for a year. You left me to rot on Svartalfheim and I woke up choking on blood alone.
Distantly, he pictured reaching into the past and snapping its neck.
To little effect, of course. Odin had always been able to enforce silence in his presence, but within Loki's own mind, no pain, real or imagined, could ever make the creature's cries cease.
You can't go, brother, it insisted. You left me here on the eve of war, and everything was lost. And now you're leaving me behind again.
But this was what he had wanted.
This was what he'd told himself he wanted, even then. Even as he'd watched Thor's fragile mortal body fall, and his familiar, uncomprehending eyes close.
But that was precisely why it was better to keep Thor away. There was no room for sentiment in this matter; they were a danger to one another. Especially now.
Loki could not imagine that Thor would ever forgive him if he knew he lived. He could see Thor's eyes darkening, his hand slashing up to call his hammer, but he could bear to think no further.
Could Thor kill him? Could he murder Thor for a second time?
Thor's victory should have been a certainty, but Loki had a perverse tendency to survive when he should not. He didn't know how to explain his failure to die by the dark elf's blade except perhaps that some long-buried, instinctive barbarian magic had saved him, despite his best intentions. He could not know what else it might decide to save him from, nor how much his survival might cost.
He knew that this was necessary, and still he bargained with it, still he begged. Ever the coward.
He might have said he'd have borne it better in other circumstances; but what other circumstances could there be? He was only on this throne, only out of his cage, only still drawing breath, because his mother was dead, and his father- Well. The Allfather was elsewhere.
He felt each absence as another blade in his chest – or rather, as the hollows left when the blade had been pulled out.
He kept returning to the pain, picking at it like a scab. He saw the queen in his mind, the last image he had ever seen of her, dignified as ever despite the tears shining in her eyes, tears he had caused. He pictured her dead, and her face did not change. He wanted to flinch away from the image, but instead he held onto it as if holding his own hand under boiling water, because it was wrong, so sickeningly, fundamentally wrong, that she had died while he cheated death again and again. This pain was only a sliver of his debt, only the tiniest fragment of what he deserved.
He heard an echo of Odin's voice in his anger, and he recoiled from it.
That loss, he told himself viciously, was nothing to regret. The old man had left him no choice; he had lost his mind. It was one thing to condemn a treacherous second son, but quite another to have his men try to kill his only remaining heir.
Loki should be glad to be rid of him; he should be thanked for removing him from the throne. If the Allfather's will had gone unchallenged, the Nine Realms would have burned.
(And that's the second time I've saved your life today, brother.)
(Although he couldn't be certain- It hadn't been clear, in the midst of everything, what Odin had intended. Loki had just seen him turn, the blank lack of recognition, the darkness sinking slowly into his remaining eye – the look of a man who had thought he had nothing to lose, discovering he had lost yet more.)
(Loki knew that look better than he wanted to. He couldn't afford to wait to see where it might lead.) (He could not afford the guilt, the need, the poisonous hope that still burrowed deeper in his mind like maggots at the sight. He was no longer Odin's dog, and he would not follow him wide-eyed over the edge.)
But perhaps that was just one more delusion – because wasn't his need to protect the Allfather's heir the Allfather's doing too? (Wasn't everything?)
Thor might be the only person left in the universe who still loved him. If he truly loved him at all.
Thor had tried to forgive Loki as he walked away; he had looked the Allfather in the eye and called a traitor honourable in death, only moments after calling him mad. (He dared forgive Loki, when he still didn't understand.)
Thor had told Loki he would kill him, and then found himself unable to land a single blow, and Loki still did not know if he had lied or simply changed his mind.
Thor had told Loki he had mourned.
And despite everything, Loki had seen Thor mourning him, the tears in his eyes, the desperate final smile, the storm gathering overhead and the weight he was still carrying. He'd seen his grief and he'd seen his rage and he'd seen Thor look straight through him as if he wasn't there; and he'd seen the shadow of Odin behind it all.
(What did Thor see when he looked at Loki? What did he think he was mourning? He'd never even seen his brother's true face.)
Thor was a riddle with no answer, the same as his father; even he did likely did not know if there was any truth to the love he thought he felt. Loki could not trust him, could not need him, could not allow himself even to get caught in the question.
Even if the love were real, it would be less than Loki hoped for, and more than he deserved. And it would doubtless crumble the moment that Thor realised that Loki had had no honourable death, but rather remained the same as before: dishonourable, mad, and despicably alive.
But what if it didn't? the child in Loki insisted. What if he's searching for you now, hoping it was a trick, hoping you're alive? What if he'd come back for you if you would only wait?
The thought terrified him.
He tried to think it – Thor still loves me – and he couldn't breathe. It was a noose around his neck, a hand around his throat. Thor's hand on his throat, pinning him beneath a raised fist; his father's hands on his throat, on his jaw, in his hair, catching his struggling wrist, and his mother smoothing his hair back like a cat's and making the bruises disappear, making him promise to be good. The hand of a monster on his wrist, peeling back his borrowed skin to reveal its own reflection.
You are our son, Loki, a soft voice whispered. Ours.
They'd made him that way. There was no corner of his being that did not bear their fingerprints.
But what else would he have become? He only belonged to Odin's house because his monstrous father had not wanted him. There was no other life that had been stolen from him; it was this or oblivion. And it was beginning to seem that oblivion did not want him either.
Loki loved Thor because he had been designed to love Thor. He knew this. He understood perfectly well what had been done to him: the surest way to tame a wolf was to take it from the den and never let it learn that it was a wolf at all.
But it was too late. Knowing could not change what was already done.
He'd died for Thor once, and he'd do it again, as many times as he was asked.
He could send Thor away, scorn him, spite him, make him bleed. He could cast off all appearances of care. But he would never rid himself of the feeling of hollowness in his chest that had been there long before any blade had pierced his heart, and worsened with every hour they were apart.
So Loki sat on a cold throne in a ruined hall as the last of the daylight fade away, and he felt each breath come easier as the poison in his blood was broken down and reabsorbed, and he let his mind began to turn over the path from here onwards, and he told himself that he wasn't waiting. (And waiting. And waiting.)
There was nothing else he could do.