THE SHE-WOLF AND THE RAVEN

Chapter 16: Simulacrum

"He stole Frigga's dress of falcon feathers. Then as a falcon he flew out of Asgard. Jötunheim was the place that he flew toward. The anger and the fierceness of the hawk was within Loki as he flew through the Giants' Realm. The heights and the chasms of that dread land made his spirits mount up like fire. He saw the whirlpools and the smoking mountains and had joy of these sights. Higher and higher he soared until, looking toward the South, he saw the flaming land of Muspelheim. Higher and higher still he soared. With his falcon's eyes he saw the gleam of Surtur's flaming sword. All the fire of Muspelheim and all the gloom of Jötunheim would one day be brought against Asgard and against Midgard. But Loki was no longer dismayed to think of the ruin of Asgard's beauty and the ruin of Midgard's promise."

oooooo

The stars shone brightly in the crisp night air. Lights along each side of the street twinkled merrily and reflected off the dark ocean below, whose waves could just be heard, intermixed with the laughter, songs, and merriment of revelers. The feast, while a poor imitation of those shared on Asgard, was still a balm to the souls of the grieving Aesir.

They were so few now. The mighty Aesir, now stripped of their might, were hardly more than peasant farmers and fishers scratching what living they could from a frigid, unwanted Midgardian seashore. Yet, for a night, they could pretend to forget their losses and instead relive their memories. As the weak ale flowed, the tales, songs, and poems of old also poured freely through the large hall they gathered together in. In the lore of old, they could remember the bravery and hearts of those who walked through the lands of the living before them and inspire themselves to face their own quests for valor, as was the wont of their people.

As the revels of the night drew to a close, Loki supported the raucous steps of the King of Asgard who tottered unsteadily down the cobblestone road and clung to Loki's shoulder for support. A ballad of old poured out of Thor's bearded mouth for all to hear and Loki bit back his laughter as Thor's booming voice brought cheers out of some of the houses and windows that they passed along the way. Others joined in his song and sang along with him as they made their way back to Thor's dwelling.

Now, clothed in his finest armor, Thor looked more the king he was intended to be. Loki gawked at first as Thor appeared more like Odin than Loki ever dreamed was possible, but when his brilliant grin broke through his face, the underlying battering of cheerfulness was all Thor.

After far more emotional monologues and choruses of ballads than Loki ever wished to hear, he finally succeeded in depositing the King of Asgard in his bed. Thor's snores filled his freshly cleaned dwelling before Loki even closed the front door.

Loki took in his moment of solitude the walk back through the town afforded him to wander in his thoughts. He meandered aimlessly through the town, enjoying the familiar sounds of Asgardian instruments and tunes drifting upon the cool night air and if he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was wandering through the streets of the city he once thought of as home.

So lost was he that he failed to notice the lithe shadow that crept silently from an open door, sword in hand. He startled as he came to himself at the feel of cold, sharp uru at his throat.

It was not the first time that blade had found its home directed at his jugular. He arched one eyebrow as he followed the sharp edge to its hilt and then to the deadly hand which wielded it. In the next instant, another hand captured the collar of his tunic and pulled him over the threshold of the door. The door closed and bolted behind him.

He barely had time to notice the dimly lit room before the sword clambered to the floor along with the bodice of a finely made gown. Familiar lips forced him back against the door and experienced fingers tugged at the clasps and ties of his formal armor, begging his bare chest to meet hers. The lips trailed down each patch of skin unburdened of fabric and leather with a desperate intensity before finding purchase on his lips again.

It was a dance he was too long accustomed to-one which had often filled similar nights after such feasts where two lonely, overlooked souls wordlessly gave temporary solace to the other. The two misfits of the Asgardian elite pretended they had a place together.

"Sif," Loki tried to whisper out in between her ministrations but a finger to his lips and slight growl under her breath warned him to stop. As his daggers and belt fell and only his breeches remained, he took in a sharp intake of breath and pulled away.

"Sif, cease this," he said as he placed his hands on hers to stop her from continuing. In surprise, she stopped.

She was not used to interruptions. In their secret ritual known only to them, hidden behind locked doors and shadowed stairwells and forgotten cottages, the rules were quite simple. One, they never spoke of their liaisons before or after. Two, they never spoke during their trysts. If their secret remained garbed in silence, it was safe, hidden as well as any treasure in Odin's vault.

When words were used, there was no peace between them. In public and at all other times, they would accuse and distrust the other, threaten and humiliate, compete and insult, but when they approached the other in silence was when the temporary truce began.

Once, when his heart and ambitions were still young and naïve, he had harbored vain fantasies of winning the heart of Asgard's warrior maiden. In those days, he pursued her in earnest, in the same way he pursued the admiration of Asgard...till he realized her heart, and the respect of Asgard, would never be his.

In his mind, long after he abandoned his ambitions for both the admiration of the lady and the realm, he still considered her as the embodiment of all he loved at hated in Asgard. The warrior maiden was the epitome of Asgardian virtues. In her, the marriage of strength and beauty, wisdom and glory, pride and fierce loyalty dwelt unquestioned. To win her approval was to win the heart of the realm he once loved.

But both the lady and the realm had eyes for only one warrior and Loki could never compete against Asgard's Golden Prince.

To Asgard, the second prince would only remain as a convenient tool, a shadowy weapon to be brought out in the most dire straits, but never in the light of day for all to see and admire. Asgard could never recognize his worth in the halls of the warriors, but only benefit from his gifts in secret, dark corridors of the hidden underbelly of the kingdom.

He was the same to Sif. She welcomed him into her presence when none could see and then scorned him in public.

Even now, after a night spent shining as Queen of Asgard in all her regal beauty at the side of her King, it was Loki she wished to use to warm her bed. What he would have given, in his younger years, to exchange places with his brother this night. He once craved to be the recipient of her gloried presence, to wear her adoration as a crown, to show all he met that she wielded shield and sword for him alone. What would he have given, during his short reign, for her to kneel willingly for him as her chosen and respected king!

But it would never be.

As easy as a well-practiced fly of the dagger, he had let himself follow the point of her sword, but this was not the same. He was not the same and he felt the jarring disjuncture between old habit and conscious thought overtake him like frost at midnight.

"Stay," she pleaded and they both knew she meant for more than the night.

"Am I destined for naught but mending what my brother has broken?" he whispered as he turned away from her brilliant, entrancing beauty. "Must he grant me the shards of Asgard only after all is shattered?"

"He has no wish to be king. He would happily grant all to your care."

"I have no wish to be a shadow king."

"Then become the true king. Rule in his stead. Asgard would rejoice and thrive under your care," she entreated as her lips resumed trailing a path up his arm and to his face. He knew, in that moment, she included the Queen of Asgard in her offer, though she did not say it with words.

His heart nearly stood still as he considered the ramifications of her offer. She held before her what he thought he always wanted. She offered him the adoration of Asgard, the recognition of his worth, the open acceptance of himself to both realm and warrior-queen, and elevation to equal worth with Thor. It was all his brother had that Loki once envied.

Sif's lips met his again, dripping with both temptation and promise, pleading and persuasion.

It could all, would all be his if he agreed.

oooooo

Loki could still feel the echo of her fingertips on his skin as clearly as he could hear the ocean waves on the shore alongside where his boots tread aimlessly along a path. He inhaled the salted air and closed his eyes as he sought to break his mind and body out of their all too familiar reversions into the roles he once filled. It was as second nature as it had been to fall into the rigidity of courtly manners the moment he entered the feast. Being around the Aesir, even in so disparate a setting as this humble Midgardian town, was as following well-worn hunting trails in the forest. It was familiar and automatic, leading him in the same, predictable direction he always traversed.

Unfortunately, it led him in a direction he had no wish to continue travelling in. Those were the patterns of the second Odinson – the broken fragments of the images of himself that he left strewn in the wake of battles on Jotunheim, Midgard, and Svartalfheim. That life, those patterns, were built on lies and he could not fall back into the worn ruts of who he had once been.

Sif didn't know him. Since that day in Jotunheim, their paths had never crossed into the shadowed spaces of their shared silence. This night, she wished to call out the old Loki as a necromancer calls upon the spirits of the dead.

But he had no wish to reanimate his many corpses.

"Cease this, Sif. We cannot go back," he whispered quietly in her room from where his forehead leaned against hers. In the spell cast by the dim light and their rapid heartbeats, his words were as heavy as molten silver. It was his movements that effectively broke the trance they were both in. He gently disentangled himself from Sif's embrace and backed away to reach for his discarded apparel, thus subverting her further advances before they could reach her desired end.

Sif's cheeks flushed and her instinctive glare melted away. She reached out and wrapped a shawl around herself, but not before she collapsed against a nearby wall and let herself fall to the ground, her face covered by her knees. Loki froze as he caught a glimpse of a sight he had never before seen in his long acquaintance with the lady: her tears.

Sif never cried. Not when temporarily relieved of a limb by a Fire Giant, not when faced with the deaths of her closest warrior-companions, and not when Thor unintentionally dismissed or humiliated her again and again in front of the Asgardian court. While Loki could remember at least one instant when he had witnessed the tears of each of the Warriors Three, he had never been privy to such a sight from Sif. Yet, here she sat, allowing silent sobs to shake through her as she huddled beneath her shawl as if it were a shield and could protect her from the wild world outside its woven fringes.

Loki knew their time for words was not yet over. He sat in a nearby armchair with a sigh.

"Sif, what is this about?" he asked. "And do not waste your breathe by pretending your actions are fueled by underlying fondness for me."

She only wept harder so that the tears left wet trails on the skirt of her fine Asgardian feasting dress.

"I'm sorry," she managed to say, though her face remained hidden from sight. "We used to…after feasts. How you and I both hated those feasts! I just wished, for a moment…but you are right. We cannot ever go back and allowing pretenses benefits no one.

"Ah! Loki, I'm so weary! All Asgard looks to me to rescue them and restore them to their former glory. Short of conquering Midgard, how am I to accomplish such a feat? You see how few we are, how far we have fallen. It is impossible to return to what we once were."

"You spoke of all Thor has lost, but neglected to speak of your own grief," he observed as he gave more weight to his consideration of her. He came to kneel before her and removed her hands from her face so he could better see her red-rimmed, swollen eyes.

She nodded and allowed her face to momentarily reveal the depths of her grief. "I miss Asgard…and the old Thor. I much preferred to stay as Lady Sif and the Warriors Three than what I am now," she said. "And I miss them-the Three-more than I ever knew was possible."

She took the side of her shawl to wipe her eyes and she lay her head against her knees to meet his gaze. "At first, all Asgard asked of me was the use of my sword in their service. Then Asgard wished for my womb to perpetuate the royal lineage. I have failed on both counts and my penance is to carry both throne and king in a strange land where we dwell as exiles dependent on the charity of others."

Loki exhaled deeply and let himself collapse all the way to the floor to sit beside her. He pulled her into his arms and felt her sobs begin anew and her tears wet his shoulder.

"Sif, surely there is hope for Asgard, hope for Thor, and hope for you in future."

"Hope is a more deadly poison than any to be found with the mages on Alfheim," she spat out bitterly. "How long do I hope there will be enough provisions for the next season or that Thor will manage to remember he has duties to fulfill? How long do I hope that Midgard allows us to remain as we are?"

"So, your solution is to conquer Midgard?" Loki asked with one eyebrow arched.

Sif gave a surprised laugh through her tears and she shook her head. "Of course not. My solution is for you to conquer Midgard for me."

"Ah, what is this? I should return to my world-conquering villainy and throne-snatching ways? I am surprised at you, good lady, to seek to both benefit from and aid my nefarious plots instead of thwarting them as is your valiant way."

Sif snorted and covered her mouth with her hand. The tears no longer fell as readily and she wiped those that remained away with her shawl as she fought to return to her normally unruffled composure. "Aye. If the throne you are snatching away is mine, I will happily encourage all manner of villainy to overthrow myself.

"You always told us that Thor was not ready to be king. You were more right than even you knew, I think. While Thor is the ideal Aesir warrior, the king Asgard needed for who we once were, he is woefully inept at becoming what we need now, which is no warrior. Loki, you are gifted in the subtly of politics in a way Thor never was. Your strengths, so often despised on Asgard, are exactly what the New Asgard requires to survive and to thrive as we are now. Stay. Relieve Thor of the throne and give Asgard the leadership we need now."

"No, Sif," Loki answered, falling serious again. "I never wished for the throne and I have no desire to rule on one now. Even if Thor were to fall upon his knees and grovel or threaten me with that monstrosity of an ax, I would still refuse it."

Sif's eyes widened slightly and she considered him more closely. "Truly, prince? You wish me to believe the one who sabotaged Thor's coronation to prove a point, who sought to destroy Jotunheim to stabilize his own reign, and who sought to conquer Midgard as his own throne has no desire to be king? Come now, Lie-Bringer, what other tales should I believe?"

Loki grit his teeth and his posture grew rigid. "I will discuss it no further. We will not speak of this night again, dear sister, nor revisit its events in future," he said pointedly as he rose and replaced what remained of his apparel. Her face first flushed and then grew desolate again as she watched him prepare to leave.

He let his expression soften and he paused to place a kiss on her head. "But we will seek a hope that proves a healing balm for all," he said. "I may not wish to rule Asgard, but I do not wish her ruin. We will see what may be done."

She nodded and the smallest degree of the brightness birthed of hope shone out of her tear-stained eyes.

ooooooo

Loki was far too unsettled to do anything other than wander the near-empty streets of the little town. As dawn inched closer, the revelers vanished into their homes and left the streets cloaked in both silence and darkness interrupted only by street lights. As he walked, he was struck again with how vastly different circumstances were for the Aesir now than they had been on Asgard.

True, they were fortunate not to have been utterly destroyed, but he felt the full grief of what they had lost begin to prickle along his senses and crowd his vision. Here, the golden spires of a mighty palace did not give shade or glisten in the midday light. Where once magic and precious metals were interwoven into the very architecture around them, now there was naught but earth and stone and wood. The once mighty Aesir now lived as Midgardian peasants, only to show their true selves during feasts.

Who were they now? What remained for them after the "Twilight of the Gods"?

Beyond great halls and courtyards, armies and warships, when the mightiest of weapons and the strongest of barricades were swallowed by flames, what remained? What could rise from the ashes of a ruined people? Could the knowledge of "past greatness" maintain enough embers to warm a people into their future chill?

Or was the knowledge of their might of old a crueler fate, a greater punishment, than any humble circumstances? Was it not better to be born and die a slave than to be born a king and die a servant?

The All-Father proved not to be eternal, the mighty Thor failed, Asgard crumbled, and even "gods" must die. Loki never once considered what once built the pillars of his life to be anything other than permanent, but here they were. Sifting through even worse wreckage than he had inflicted on Jotunheim and Midgard.

Thor's "feast" was an appropriate mockery of the former glory of Asgard and the "celebration" felt like more of a dirge as Loki scanned the crowd for familiar faces. There were too many faces he did not see. It was much harder to harbor flames of unforgiveness and bitterness in light of the journey to Valhalla and Helheim. He may have tolerated some, disliked many, and hated more than a few of those faces, but he (mostly) did not wish their deaths and he could even muster sorrow over their passing.

It was too late now. Too late to make amends. Too late to speak truth or lies or clear air or muddy waters. Too late to admit how much he loved the realm he said he despised. Feigning dislike of what he truly loved did nothing other than prove his own falseness in the face of the loss of the object of his affection.

It was never the throne he longed for, despite all Asgard's accusations to the contrary. It was their love, respect, and acceptance he sought and winning a throne was but a means to an end. He fought so hard to win Odin's respect, Asgard's favor, and Thor's praise only to end up locked away in a prison cell for his efforts.

A perennial disappointment.

A failure.

A traitor.

A villain.

His long-cherished ends proved impossible to achieve - as unpredictable as a sail on the ocean, dependent on winds and tides he could not control.

Even now, as Thor welcomed him back as a prince, he felt the eyes of Asgard remain on him, lingering as he passed, whispering of his treacheries, his convenient reappearance only after the fight was over. They wished him to take up the mask he had always worn and serve Asgard as the finely-crafted tool he was meant to be, while keeping him shrouded in shadows and doubt.

He couldn't do it. He would forever disappoint them all-again and again and again. He would not fall back into his former masquerade.

It was Frigga, only, who saw below the mask. She loved him no matter the form he inhabited. She demanded no mask, no adherence to a mold he was never made to inhabit permanently. She loved him when he changed and when he did not.

It was why he fought so hard to push her away at the end. In the depths of his self-hatred, how could she still love him? How could she claim he was worthy of her love when he so clearly was not? She should reject him with the same vehemence he rejected himself.

And now Frigga was gone-replaced by Sif. Sif who could never see beneath his pretenses.

He understood Sif. She, like all the Aesir, longed to return to a bygone day, to maintain the false belief that nothing had changed. She sought out Loki as a symbol of that past and a hope for future glory. She saw not him not as a man but as the Asgardian prince, the illusion, the Aesir-forged lie that never truly existed.

He was a Jotun prince, a bastard son, an interloper in the House of Odin, thrust onto an ignorant Asgard and rejected for his unbearable otherness.

Sif would despise him if she knew. They all would. But Sif never really knew him.

Sif made it easy for him to leave her room and walk away from her advances. To her, he had always been a means to an end, a tool like herself. They could predict each other's movements in battle and read the flickering thoughts beneath their brows in a council meeting, but she did not know him beneath what he allowed her to enter into. She believed his façade, as everyone else did, and that was a shield in her presence that kept him from true vulnerability.

He thought of how this night would have progressed if it were a different reincarnation of himself from a past era. The pre-Jotunheim Loki would have willingly let his brother's wife seduce him, only to embarrass the lady and gloat over his brother later. It would have all been a grand game, another way of besting his brother, proving Loki's superiority, and mocking the Aesir hypocrisy Loki so disdained (and delighted in). The pre-Svartalfheim Loki would have also willingly given into the lady's advances, but he would have done so out of anger and a desire for revenge. In his rage, he would have found a way to wound them both in order to pour out his misery on two of the individuals that he harbored the most bitterness for.

He was not the same. He was neither of those Lokis anymore.

Who was he now? Fenris Friggson, Lord of Midgardian Pines and Snow and Father of Wolves.

This new version of himself walked away out of his own pride. As he considered this, his thoughts travelled to the she-wolf and he cringed as guilt flickered through his consciousness. This unbidden loyalty made him almost feel compelled to march back to Sif's chambers at once to continue where they left off. He shuddered lest he allow that woman to gain any more control over his actions or desires than she had already managed. If only to wound and defy the she-wolf, he would have stayed with Sif and then rejoiced in the emotional chaos he unleashed upon his captor after.

How dare she! Loki thought to himself. How dare she bind him and entrap him! How dare she force herself into his life!

Loki's irritation only grew as he remembered Thor's open admiration of her beauty. The oaf spoke truth and it rankled Loki to no end. In Asgardian courtly finery, the Midgardian shape-shifter was fit to grace the arm of even the King of the Nine and not even Loki could deny that she was a sight to behold. It only made him more angry with her.

How dare she feign to be a warrior of strength with a will of iron and a form of beauty! How dare she pretend to be worthy and tempt him to cease fighting this bond! How dare she be anything but an interloper in his life, a temporary convenience to be used for his whims!

As if binding his honor to her through their progeny and forcing her enchantment upon him wasn't enough, she wished to lay claim to more of him than he wished to accede. He hated her, loathed her, despised her more than he ever had before in that moment as he realized he wanted nothing more than to run straight to her, lay his head on her bosom and find reprieve from all the burdens he carried through the balm of her presence.

How dare she reveal his weaknesses!

He despised frailty and she could see through his facades of strength. He despised sentimentality, but she could feel the very movements of his heart within him despite his every attempt to cover himself from her gaze. She bested his magic, his greatest of talents, without even meaning to. She easily saw through all the "Lie-Smith's" layers of deceptions to the maskless places within that none other than Frigga were ever skilled enough to penetrate.

Who was she to find him as a wild creature of pine and snow and lay claim to him then? When stripped of title and status, family and realm, Aesir form and all possible utilities, she chose him. Who was she to tie herself to him for absolutely no discernable reason or cause other than "she was his"?

He couldn't bear it.

Why? He cried out. He had done nothing to deserve her favor and had actively fought to dissuade her. He still hoped that revelations of his past exploits on Midgard and the aversion the Aesir still harbored towards him would be enough to repel her, to prove her false, and to show that she was like everybody else.

He needed to push her away. He needed her claim on him to be conditional and based on his abilities and utilities. He needed to earn his worth, so he could believe it himself. He needed to close his eyes to her potential worth, because he could not bear for her to be true- for that was the greatest indignity of all.

As dawn came to the shoreline over the roofs of New Asgard, Aesir began to stir and wake. He met the nods and greetings of a handful of Aesir before he turned back. He could not abide any more eyes seeing through him and discovering his weaknesses. He could feel the edges of his composure crumbling like a sandstone cliff side in a storm and he needed to get away.

He transformed into the form of a raven and flew away, leaving Asgard far below, and seeking solitude higher in the mountains. It had always been this way. To maintain the mask required him to escape its confinements and find safe places to remove it, to free himself to be what he was beneath: weak, sentimental, and decidedly not Aesir.

He was the unmated raven - the anomaly that flew over the forest. He was the lone wolf - the one that belonged nowhere and to no one. He was the Jotun raised in Asgard, the prince sentenced to live out his days in prison, and the shape-shifter who failed to fit the molds he was asked to fill, no matter how hard he tried to fill them.

And now he was reborn again as Fenris Friggson and he had absolutely no idea what that meant.

ooooooo

Author's Notes:

I realized I should probably explain a couple of things. First off, in this MCU AU, Thor never travels to Sakar. Since Odin dies on Asgard, Hela arrives directly to Asgard and Thor is never pushed out of the bifrost to Sakar...thus never meets Valkyrie, Korg, or Miek, and so they aren't in this universe. How does Bruce Banner come back to Earth to play his role in IW and Endgame? I dunno. Pick a scenario. Maybe Heimdall calls him to Asgard to help against Hela. Maybe he falls through an intergalactic rabbit hole. It's not important to this plot so you have freedom to imagine it yourself.

What is important is that Thor did not spend a solid two years wandering around the galaxies looking for Infinity Stones. He had to play king in Asgard instead. He did still go to Earth to help with the Ultron situation and making Vision and all that. He also got Surtur's crown, but the rest of the time he was in Asgard. In this AU, Sif survives (obviously) instead of mysteriously vanishing (like she did in Ragnarok). Basically, what is important is that most of the main plot points from the movies occur. If there's any disjuncture between this tale and the movies, we can probably come up with a creative solution. ;)

Myth from Padraic Colom's Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths (1920). In his stories, he translates Ragnarok as "the Twilight of the Gods" and I utilize that phrase here.