“Thor was beginning to think he might be happy in Midgard. Not yet, of course; not while the news of his father’s death and his mother’s rejection was still so fresh, not while he could still feel the ache in his muscles from straining to lift Mjölnir, in vain. But someday. He would court Jane slowly, as befit a lady of her standing and education. Selvig, who seemed to stand in place of a father for her, had given his implicit permission.
“So it came as a complete surprise when Lady Darcy called from the front room of the Midgardians’ strange abode, ‘Thor? There’s someone here for you… she says she’s your mother?’
“Thor’s hesitant spark of hope was instantly smothered. What could she be here for, but to let him feel the full measure of her fury and disappointment?
“He emerged from the room where he had been reading one of Jane’s texts of Midgardian physics (a wondrously bizarre way of viewing the world) with his head bowed, bracing himself against the onslaught. But when he dared to raise his eyes, Frigga’s expression seemed wrong; it was worry, not anger, that creased her brow and tightened her lips.”
@shine-of-asgard‘s giveaway fic is now completely posted on AO3, Parts I and II as Chapter 1 (Paradise Lost), Parts III and IV as Chapter 2 (Paradise Regained). It’s probably easier to read there than as 4 parts on Tumblr…
Tag: canon-divergent au
Prince of Darkness – Chapter 2: Paradise Regained – Philosopher_King – Thor (Movies) [Archive of Our Own]
“Thor was beginning to think he might be happy in Midgard. Not yet, of course; not while the news of his father’s death and his mother’s rejection was still so fresh, not while he could still feel the ache in his muscles from straining to lift Mjölnir, in vain. But someday. He would court Jane slowly, as befit a lady of her standing and education. Selvig, who seemed to stand in place of a father for her, had given his implicit permission.
“So it came as a complete surprise when Lady Darcy called from the front room of the Midgardians’ strange abode, ‘Thor? There’s someone here for you… she says she’s your mother?’
“Thor’s hesitant spark of hope was instantly smothered. What could she be here for, but to let him feel the full measure of her fury and disappointment?
“He emerged from the room where he had been reading one of Jane’s texts of Midgardian physics (a wondrously bizarre way of viewing the world) with his head bowed, bracing himself against the onslaught. But when he dared to raise his eyes, Frigga’s expression seemed wrong; it was worry, not anger, that creased her brow and tightened her lips.”
@shine-of-asgard‘s giveaway fic is now completely posted on AO3, Parts I and II as Chapter 1 (Paradise Lost), Parts III and IV as Chapter 2 (Paradise Regained). It’s probably easier to read there than as 4 parts on Tumblr…
Prince of Darkness, Fourth and Final Part
Two months after I got the prompt, I finally finished @shine-of-asgard‘s fic from my 666-follower giveaway. Jeezy Chreezy.
Thor
and his companions made camp on the glacier. They ate from the travel rations
they had packed because there was no hunting or forage to speak of. The sun
scarcely seemed to dip below the horizon for an hour, and it never truly grew
dark. Thor’s friends seemed to be able to sleep, shielded from the unrelenting
light by the thick fabric of their tent, but Thor could not.He
left Volstagg’s snoring and Sif’s quiet nonsensical muttering and sat alone on
a fur blanket on the snow-covered ice, watching the sky slowly change from light
blue tinged with pink at the horizon to a deepening lilac. As the sky darkened,
a ribbon of acid-green light became visible, like a great serpent wrapped
around the Earth. Thor remembered this from his visits to Midgard in his youth:
the Northern Lights. He remembered asking Loki if he had cast some sort of
illusion, and Loki had shaken his head, his mouth slightly open in awe, and
said, “No, it’s just the sky.”The
sun was well above the horizon again when his friends emerged from the tent and
began busying themselves with rebuilding the fire. None of them asked Thor
whether he had slept at all, for which he was grateful. After a light
breakfast of toasted waybread and slices of cured meat, they quenched the fire
with snow and headed toward the cluster of black tents where Coulson’s
comrades—the “agents of Shield,” he had called them—had made camp.They
met Coulson and a few of his black-clad agents partway between their two camps.
“Loki has agreed to meet with you,” Coulson said. “I’ll escort you to the Jötun
encampment.”Perfect ending! I didn’t know what to expect, but Loki actually not wanting to rule Jotunheim is perfect, as is his carving his place somewhere else entirely and not going by any titles.
“Blood will out” lol. Fuck Odin. And Frigga to some degree. And Thor should grow up. So yeah, perfect story
Thank you so much! I’m so glad you’re happy with it 🙂
Prince of Darkness, Part III
My 666-follower giveaway fic for @shine-of-asgard, which I originally intended to be between 1000 and 2000 words, is now more than 7000 words… and I still have one part left. This is even worse than the time my 2500-word giveaway fic for @darklittlestories came out at 5200. Length limits are seriously not my thing.
————————————
Thor was beginning to think he
might be happy in Midgard. Not yet, of course; not while the news of his
father’s death and his mother’s rejection was still so fresh, not while he
could still feel the ache in his muscles from straining to lift Mjölnir, in
vain. But someday. He would court Jane slowly, as befit a lady of her standing
and education. Selvig, who seemed to stand in place of a father for her (he
called himself her “advisor,” which seemed odd considering that she held no
political power) had given his implicit permission.So it came as a complete surprise
when Lady Darcy called from the front room of the Midgardians’ strange abode,
“Thor? There’s someone here for you… she says she’s your mother?”Thor’s hesitant spark of hope was
instantly smothered. What could she be here for, but to let him feel the full
measure of her fury and disappointment?He emerged from the room where he
had been reading one of Jane’s texts of Midgardian physics (a wondrously
bizarre way of viewing the world) with his head bowed, bracing himself against
the onslaught. But when he dared to raise his eyes, Frigga’s expression seemed
wrong; it was worry, not anger, that creased her brow and tightened her lips.
I’m reblogging this from myself because I think the “Keep reading” link doesn’t show up on the phone app or sometimes even on computer browsers unless it’s reblogged, and this post is just too long for Tumblr’s bullshit (which is why I put in the link in the first place).
Also tagging some people I think might have been reading: @acebakes, @angrymadsygin, @foundlingmother, @illwynd, @kingloptr, @nursejoh53, @wouldyouknowmore, @writernotwaiting
Prince of Darkness, Part III
My 666-follower giveaway fic for @shine-of-asgard, which I originally intended to be between 1000 and 2000 words, is now more than 7000 words… and I still have one part left. This is even worse than the time my 2500-word giveaway fic for @darklittlestories came out at 5200. Length limits are seriously not my thing.
————————————
Thor was beginning to think he
might be happy in Midgard. Not yet, of course; not while the news of his
father’s death and his mother’s rejection was still so fresh, not while he
could still feel the ache in his muscles from straining to lift Mjölnir, in
vain. But someday. He would court Jane slowly, as befit a lady of her standing
and education. Selvig, who seemed to stand in place of a father for her (he
called himself her “advisor,” which seemed odd considering that she held no
political power) had given his implicit permission.
So it came as a complete surprise
when Lady Darcy called from the front room of the Midgardians’ strange abode,
“Thor? There’s someone here for you… she says she’s your mother?”
Thor’s hesitant spark of hope was
instantly smothered. What could she be here for, but to let him feel the full
measure of her fury and disappointment?
He emerged from the room where he
had been reading one of Jane’s texts of Midgardian physics (a wondrously
bizarre way of viewing the world) with his head bowed, bracing himself against
the onslaught. But when he dared to raise his eyes, Frigga’s expression seemed
wrong; it was worry, not anger, that creased her brow and tightened her lips.
“Mother, I did not expect to see
you,” he said cautiously.
“Thor, my son,” she said, her
voice thick, and rushed forward to embrace him.
“Mother, I don’t understand… I
thought you blamed me for Father’s death, had forbidden me to return…”
Frigga drew back with a look of
consternation. “Who told you that?”
“Loki. He came here to see me,
two days ago now.”
Frigga shook her head frantically,
a hand straying toward her mouth. “No, Thor, your father is still alive, though
he did succumb to the Odinsleep after putting it off for so long. But Eir and I
have had to wake him before his strength was fully restored.”
“What? Why? Why would Loki lie to
me? Mother, what has happened at home?”
Frigga closed her eyes and took a
deep breath before she answered, and how had Thor not noticed the redness
around her eyes? “Loki is… missing. No one has seen him for two days. Which
might not be a cause for alarm, except that…”
“…he was King while Father was
Sleeping. And Heimdall has seen nothing?”
“Nothing of Loki, no. He has
known for some time that Loki can conceal himself when he wishes, but we
assumed it was only some foolish love-affair he wanted to keep secret… But what
he has seen is even more troubling.
Jötunheim is awake again, showing an energy and rebuilding at a pace that can
only mean…”
“…the Casket,” Thor filled in.
“Where is it?”
“Not in the Vault. We looked,
General Tyr and I, and it seemed to be there. But on a hunch, I shielded my
hand and tried to touch it, and it vanished. An illusion.”
Thor’s mind insisted there was
only one way to put together the information he was receiving, but his heart
refused its verdict. “They must have captured Loki, forced him to call off the
Destroyer…”
“Oh, Thor…” Frigga’s voice
cracked. “You must speak with your father. Call Mjölnir and we shall go at
once.”
“Mjölnir? But I could not lift her…”
“Your father has lifted the
banishment. This is too important, and we need you.”
Thor raised his hand and reached
out for his weapon… and she answered. After a few moments he realized that he
needed to go outside so that the hammer would not come crashing through the
glass doors.
Having Mjölnir back in his hand
comforted him… but the worry he felt for Loki was too sharp and pressing for
even her presence to offer much relief. He bade his Midgardian friends a
hurried farewell, thanked them for their help and hospitality, promised to come
visit them when he could. Then, with Mjölnir’s aid, he and Frigga flew back to
the Bifröst site, she called to Heimdall, and in scarcely an instant they were
back in the Observatory… in the place where, barely four days ago, his world
had fallen apart.
Horses were waiting for them on
the bridge. Thor was still wearing the Midgardian clothing Jane had lent him;
after fumbling a bit, he tied Mjölnir to the belt loop of his jeans so that he
could mount.
The time they spent traveling
passed at once too swiftly to recall and too slowly to bear. At last Frigga led
him into the chamber where Odin had Slept. He was still reclining in the great
golden bed cushioned with furs, drinking some revitalizing potion from a silver
goblet at his bedside.
Thor knelt by his father’s bed
and took his hand, feeling the dormant strength beneath the fragile papery
skin. “I am sorry, Father. Sorry for my defiance, my arrogance… tell me how I
can help my brother.”
There was pity in Odin’s gaze
when he said, “I don’t need you to help him. I need you to stop him.”
The words chilled Thor to the
spine like the wind in Jötunheim. He carefully withdrew his hands from his
father’s, stood and backed away a few steps. “I don’t understand.”
“Thor, we should have told you,
we should have told you both,” Frigga said; if his mother were not usually so
dignified and composed, he might have called it an outburst.
“Should have told me what.” His
fear settled like a block of ice in his stomach, radiating cold through all his
limbs.
“Loki is not our son by birth,”
Odin said, his voice too calm, too neutral. “I found him as a baby in
Jötunheim, at the end of the war. He was born too small, so Laufey—his
father—left him to die.”
Thor could not believe what he
was hearing. “That’s impossible. Loki is not a Frost Giant. He looks no
different than any of us…” He stopped. But Loki did look different from
everyone in his family; Thor had even teased him about it—the dark hair, the
long nose, the lean build—and jokingly called him an Elven changeling.
“He’s a shapeshifter; it’s a rare
trait among Jötnar, but not unheard of. He shifted to an Aesir form as soon as
I picked him up, sensing a possible provider. And he stayed that way until…
something happened during your idiotic excursion to Jötunheim. He went down to
the Vault to try holding the Casket; I saw what he was doing and went to stop
him, and he confronted me.” Odin’s eye clouded for a moment, as he drifted into
troubling memory. “That was when I fell into the Sleep. He was angry,
irrational…”
“How
could he not be angry?” Thor interjected.
“He would be dead
if not for me!” Odin snapped, and lying there in his nightgown wrapped in furs
he seemed more like a querulous old man than he ever had before. “But how
did he repay me? He stole the Casket and took it right back to Laufey.”
“Laufey is dead,”
Frigga put in, her voice brittle. “Heimdall has seen that too. There was some
sort of power struggle with his sons…”
“Maybe Loki
betrayed that father, too. Better to have the viper in someone else’s nest…”
“Loki isn’t a
viper,” Thor said through gritted teeth.
“Blood will out,”
Odin said as if he hadn’t heard, his eye burning into Thor’s. “I should have
known. The boy was always a liar and a sneak…”
“Odin!” Frigga
cried, anguished. “He’s our son!”
“Not anymore.” Odin’s
pronouncement carried the weight of a disowning.
“He’s still my brother,”
Thor said with quiet vehemence.
“You can believe
that all you want, but you’ll still fight him when he comes with a Jötun army
to assail Asgard.”
“He won’t,” Thor
insisted.
“You think
returning their greatest weapon to them will be the end of it? No, Thor; he has
chosen a side and it isn’t ours.”
Odin was half
right. When the Jötun army came to Agard, Loki wasn’t with them. But it was
plain that they had an insider’s knowledge of the palace, the city, the land.
They destroyed hidden stores of food so that the city would not be able to
withstand a siege; they blockaded the entrances to a secret fortress in the
mountains so that the people could not take refuge there and raided caches of
weapons so that the populace could not take up arms. To their credit, Thor
thought, it seemed that they tried to minimize civilian casualties: the aim was
to humiliate Agard’s rulers, not to make enemies of its people.
Odin sent an emissary under a
white flag to the camp the Jötnar had established in the mountains, bearing a
missive that read, “Odin All-Father
demands that you turn over the traitor Loki Laufeyson.” The emissary
returned, frightened but unharmed, with a reply, written in large letters on
his white flag: “Odin Father of Lies does
not seem to be in a position to demand much of anything. The traitor Loki
Laufeyson conveys his warmest regards to Frigga All-Mother and invites her to
send a message when she wishes to discuss terms of surrender. She has the word
of King Helblindi that she shall not come to harm. Jötunheim has no quarrel
with Vanaheim, but remembers ancient alliances before the Realms submitted to
Asgard’s tyranny.”
Odin was furious; Frigga said
nothing. He did not even ask whether she planned to take Loki up on his offer.
Thor thought that might be a mistake. Once his parents might have thought and
acted as one… but Frigga had been quiet and distant since Odin had disowned
Loki. Thor realized that it would not surprise him if she acted on her own
contrary to Odin’s wishes—not only as Queen of Asgard, jointly responsible for
the Realm’s well-being, but as All-Mother of the Nine Realms and a princess of
Vanaheim.
As Thor led skirmishes against
the Jötnar, he wondered always if he would encounter Loki: he looked for a
shorter, slighter figure among the hulking giants; he half expected at every
moment to come face to face with his brother, to confront that face he knew
better even than his own… but would it be icy blue, now, the crystal-green eyes
turned to red? Would he know his brother in such a guise, by anything else but
his stature?
He asked Heimdall at every
opportunity for news of Loki. He was no longer concealing himself; he was in
Jötunheim, contributing his magical skill to its rebuilding with the aid of the
Casket. Meanwhile, the Jötun army laid siege to Asgard, and Thor knew that
Asgard could not long hold out. Odin stubbornly insisted that he would not
yield; Frigga grew ever more quiet and distant. Thor wondered how long it would
be before she accepted the invitation to negotiate a surrender.
Four months after the invasion of
Asgard, the stalemate was disrupted when Heimdall brought news to the royal
family: a Jötun force had invaded the northern reaches of Midgard, near the
site of their incursion more than a thousand years before. Loki was at its
head.
“I must go,” Thor told his
parents, and neither of them disputed it.
He assembled a cadre of his
most trusted warriors: Hogun, Volstagg, Fandral, and the Lady Sif, along with a
handful of the Einherjar he knew best. He asked Heimdall to locate an Agent
Philip, son of Coul, who might be able to rally Midgard’s own forces to her
defense; Heimdall told him that Coulson and a contingent of Midgardian warriors
were already in the region where Loki and his soldiers had arrived.
So Heimdall sent Thor and his
chosen companions to the far north of Midgard. In many ways, Thor thought, it
was like the desert where he had first landed: barren of vegetation as far
as he could see, with only the stark beauty of mountain crags rising from the
empty expanse, the harsh dry air cut through by winds that roared and shrieked
like berserkers that scented blood.
The Jötnar were at the edge of
the land, where the ice met the sea. Coulson was there with his Midgardian
agents, clad in their strange black cloth armor over the bulky layers that
protected them from the cold. Two strange warriors were with them, one in a
suit of red and gold metal armor that wholly enclosed his body, another in
lighter red and blue armor with a silver star on his chest and on his
blue-and-red shield.
“Nice to see you again, Dr.
Blake… or is it Thor?” Coulson greeted him.
Thor skipped over the
pleasantries. “We are here to aid you in defeating the Frost Giants. Tell us
what we must do.”
“I think you might have come to
the wrong party,” said a muffled voice from the red and gold armor.
“I don’t understand.”
“Thor, allow me to present Mr.
Tony Stark,” Coulson said, gesturing to the man in the metal armor. “And Captain
Steven Rogers.” The blue-and-red warrior nodded. “And your friends are…?”
“Lady Sif and the Warriors Three:
Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet
you all, but it’s actually looking like defeating won’t be necessary,” Coulson
explained with his usual understated equanimity. “Director Fury is waiting for
confirmation from the World Security Council and the UN, but it appears we’re
going to be able to come to an arrangement.”
“An arrangement with those—” Monsters, he had been about to say. But
Loki was one of them; he always had been. “With those invaders?” he finished
lamely.
“They describe themselves as immigrants
seeking a better life,” said the warrior with the shield, Captain Rogers. His
voice was stern, almost accusing.
“Is that what they are?” Volstagg
scoffed, and Fandral laughed. Thor held up a hand to silence them.
“They said their homeworld was
devastated by war a thousand years ago and deprived of the resources to rebuild.
By your world, interestingly enough,” Coulson added mildly. “They’re just now
starting to restore their own planet, but it will take some time for their
society and economy to recover. Some of them think they’d fare better here.”
“And so they might,” Thor
acknowledged. “But what of the Midgardians… the humans who live here now?”
Stark made an exaggerated show of
looking around, swiveling his helmeted head while its expression remained
frozen. “Are there some I didn’t know about?”
“Not right here,” Sif interjected impatiently. “In your Realm.”
“The government of Norway seems
quite amenable to the arrangement,” Coulson said. “As are the governments of
Greenland and Denmark. They’ll have to put it to a vote in their respective
parliaments, of course, and maybe even a referendum, but a military response
doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.”
“What is the nature of this ‘arrangement’?”
Hogun asked, matching Coulson’s imperturbable neutrality.
“As you may be aware, Earth’s
climate has been dangerously warming due to unfortunate energy-capture practices…”
“That’s a really euphemistic way
of saying ‘human stupidity,’” Stark put in.
“…and the
Jötnar have offered us a way to protect the Earth from some of the effects of
that warming. Or maybe even reverse it entirely.”
“They want to settle
on the glaciers and ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctic,” Captain Rogers explained,
seeming annoyed by Coulson’s vagueness. “No one lives there anyway.”
“That is blatant
penguin erasure,” said Stark, puzzlingly.
“Don’t forget
polar bears,” Coulson added, deadpan as ever.
“No people live on the glaciers and ice
sheets. They’ve assured us that they have only peaceful intentions toward the
surrounding populations. They’ll trade, of course, but respect human territorial
sovereignty.”
The Asgardians
exchanged skeptical glances; Volstagg even snorted aloud, and Thor glared at
him.
“And in return
they’ll use their magic Casket prevent the ice from melting,” Rogers finished,
with a glare of his own.
“It’s not magic,
it’s energy transfer,” Stark muttered.
“It’s really a
win-win solution for everyone,” Coulson said. “They’ll get an environment that
works for them, protect the local ecosystems, and stop sea level rise. Hunting
and fishing rights will have to be worked out, but in light of the benefits…”
“I
must warn you that the promises of Jötnar cannot be trusted,” Thor said.
“Funny,
that’s exactly what they said about you Asgardians,” Coulson replied, neutral
as ever.
Sif growled
low in her throat; Thor wasn’t sure it was voluntary. “Was there a man among
them who was smaller than the rest—about my height?”
“Yes,
the one who spoke to us on their behalf was just the size of a tall human. The
others seemed not to speak any human languages. I wondered if they choose their
ambassadors to avoid intimidating the locals.”
“No,”
Thor said sharply. “He is the only one of his size, or one of very few; the
Jötnar kill the rest at birth. He grew up in Asgard, so he is the only one who has
knowledge of the All-Tongue. That is why he was their spokesman.”
“That
and the ‘silver tongue,’” Fandral contributed. “He can be very persuasive.”
“You
seem to know this guy pretty well,” said Rogers, sounding suspicious.
“He
was raised as my brother.” A knot seemed to form in Thor’s throat even as he
said it, and he half-choked on the last word.
“Wow,
this is some real George R. R. Martin shit,” Stark commented. He muttered
something to himself; Thor thought he made out the word “fucking,” but he
couldn’t be sure. Coulson gave Stark a reproving look.
“If
you have a way to send him a message… would you tell him that his brother
wishes to speak with him? That I have no desire to fight him, only to talk.”
“Of
course, we can do that,” Coulson replied graciously.
“And I thought I’d been to some awkward family
reunions,” said Stark.
————————————
Note: Yeah, I thought the conversation between Thor and Loki deserved its own part. I hope it won’t get too much longer…
Prince of Darkness, Part I
I still haven’t finished writing @shine-of-asgard‘s fic for my Satan-themed 666-follower giveaway… I shouldn’t even do fic giveaways, I can’t keep myself to a schedule or a word limit. Oy. I have written what I think is the majority of it, though, and I got to a good cliffhanger-y chapter break (and a little past), so I’m going to post it in two parts so that you don’t have to keep waiting.
Here was the prompt: “Loki/Lucifer and Odin/God. Variation of the ‘Lightbringer’ theme where Loki rebels against Odin and tries to steal the Casket of Winters to give it back to the Jotnar. It can follow the ‘biblical’ version with Odin striking Loki down and Loki falling from Asgard or you can spin it any other the way you want. Bonus points for the appearance of Thor as a conflicted good archangel who loves his brother but won’t go against God for him.”
I did it as a fairly straightfoward canon-divergent AU… well, you’ll see.
After Odin fell into the Sleep, Loki kept going back to the
Vault every few hours to stand before the plinth where the Casket of Ancient
Winters lay. Like a guilty man returning
to the scene of the crime. But what was the crime, he wondered, and whose?
Loki’s driving his father past the brink of exhaustion by confronting him with
the truth? Or Odin’s abandoning his son when he most needed his father’s
guidance? Or was it earlier: the lie he had told Loki for his whole life only
to reveal the truth in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and then escape
taking responsibility for the aftermath? Couldn’t
he have thought of another lie? Any story, any explanation other than the
truth that Loki had already guessed?The Casket wasn’t the
only thing you took from Jötunheim that day.Loki felt a strange kinship with the Casket—like it was a
long-lost brother. Perhaps that was what kept drawing him back to it. We don’t belong here, either of us. Perhaps
that had been the true crime: those twin thefts more than a thousand years ago.He saved my life, Loki
reminded himself; I would have died if he
hadn’t taken me. But was that even true? Could he believe Odin’s word about
anything, now? Was he a rescued castoff or a hostage? I hoped we could unite our kingdoms one day—bring about an alliance,
bring about a permanent peace—through you. How would that have worked, if
Laufey had never wanted him? And how could Odin know he was Laufey’s son, if he
had been left alone to die?Loki was starved for knowledge, and he knew he would not get
it from Odin. Nor could he expect truth from his mother, from Frigga: Odin
might well have told her the same lies. No, there was only one person he could
ask: Laufey himself. As a king to another king, Laufey owed him the courtesy of
truth.Love it, love it, love it! But how cruel are you, to give Loki not one but two asshole, uncaring sires? Maybe he can off Laufey, fool Odin and reign on Jotunheim with the help of the Casquet… He’d make a good job of it. One can dream…
Glad you’re enjoying so far! Yeah, I know, I’m terribly mean to Loki… but so many fic writers have already done the “he wasn’t really abandoned” thing, I’ve decided it’s my job to write a version of Jotunheim where they do expose the small infants and it’s not a good thing but it doesn’t necessarily make them monsters (it’s not an uncommon practice, historically). As for where Loki’s going to end up… you’ll see 😉
Prince of Darkness, Part I
I still haven’t finished writing @shine-of-asgard‘s fic for my Satan-themed 666-follower giveaway… I shouldn’t even do fic giveaways, I can’t keep myself to a schedule or a word limit. Oy. I have written what I think is the majority of it, though, and I got to a good cliffhanger-y chapter break (and a little past), so I’m going to post it in two* parts so that you don’t have to keep waiting. [ETA after posting Part III: guess that didn’t happen, either.]
Here was the prompt: “Loki/Lucifer and Odin/God. Variation of the ‘Lightbringer’ theme where Loki rebels against Odin and tries to steal the Casket of Winters to give it back to the Jotnar. It can follow the ‘biblical’ version with Odin striking Loki down and Loki falling from Asgard or you can spin it any other the way you want. Bonus points for the appearance of Thor as a conflicted good archangel who loves his brother but won’t go against God for him.”
I did it as a fairly straightfoward canon-divergent AU… well, you’ll see.
————————————
After Odin fell into the Sleep, Loki kept going back to the
Vault every few hours to stand before the plinth where the Casket of Ancient
Winters lay. Like a guilty man returning
to the scene of the crime. But what was the crime, he wondered, and whose?
Loki’s driving his father past the brink of exhaustion by confronting him with
the truth? Or Odin’s abandoning his son when he most needed his father’s
guidance? Or was it earlier: the lie he had told Loki for his whole life only
to reveal the truth in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and then escape
taking responsibility for the aftermath? Couldn’t
he have thought of another lie? Any story, any explanation other than the
truth that Loki had already guessed?
The Casket wasn’t the
only thing you took from Jötunheim that day.
Loki felt a strange kinship with the Casket—like it was a
long-lost brother. Perhaps that was what kept drawing him back to it. We don’t belong here, either of us. Perhaps
that had been the true crime: those twin thefts more than a thousand years ago.
He saved my life, Loki
reminded himself; I would have died if he
hadn’t taken me. But was that even true? Could he believe Odin’s word about
anything, now? Was he a rescued castoff or a hostage? I hoped we could unite our kingdoms one day—bring about an alliance,
bring about a permanent peace—through you. How would that have worked, if
Laufey had never wanted him? And how could Odin know he was Laufey’s son, if he
had been left alone to die?
Loki was starved for knowledge, and he knew he would not get
it from Odin. Nor could he expect truth from his mother, from Frigga: Odin
might well have told her the same lies. No, there was only one person he could
ask: Laufey himself. As a king to another king, Laufey owed him the courtesy of
truth.
Loki went through the secret path he had found deep beneath
the palace; he did not want Heimdall to know of this trip. He emerged from a
cave in the ice not far from the ruined palace where Laufey’s throne still
stood, but had to trek some distance around to make sure that he approached
openly: he did not wish to be apprehended as a spy or saboteur.
Laufey’s welcome was still far from warm: “Kill him,” he
ordered his guards, sounding almost bored, as Loki walked toward the dais
between the rows of towering ice pillars.
“After all I’ve done for you?” Loki said lightly; he was
determined to show no fear, though his stomach twisted with it.
“So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.”
“That was just a bit of fun, really,” Loki said, adopting a
cocky air, half-consciously deepening his voice to match the Frost Giant’s. “To
ruin my brother’s big day. And to protect the Realm from his idiotic rule for a
while longer.”
“I will hear you,” Laufey said slowly, grudgingly.
“What I have to say is… of a sensitive nature.”
“Only a fool would dismiss his guards in the presence of an
enemy. Do you think me a fool?” Laufey’s tone was even, but his low growl held
more than a hint of warning.
“I think you a king, in the presence of a fellow king.”
Laufey scoffed. “What, is Odin dead, along with his elder
son?”
“Odin Sleeps and Thor is banished for his assault upon your
Realm.”
“In which you were an accomplice.”
Loki bowed his head. “I tried to dissuade my brother from
his bloody course, but you are right; I should not have assisted him. I hope to
make amends for the damage we have done.”
“How?” Laufey asked bluntly.
“By returning the Casket of Ancient Winters.”
An excited murmur arose among the guards and attendants who
lined what used to be the great hall. Laufey held up an impatient hand to
silence them.
“You would pay us weregild with stolen coin?”
“With lawfully taken spoils of war,” Loki corrected.
“Indeed, it would more than pay for the lives of a hundred men; with it you
could restore Jötunheim to its former glory.” He struggled to say the word
without irony.
“And what do you expect in return for this… excess of
generosity?” Laufey asked, allowing irony to drip from every word.
“Only the answer to a question, which I would ask in
private… or in the presence of only your most discreet, trusted men.”
“All of my men are discreet and trusted. Ask your question.”
Loki sighed; he hadn’t expected to be asking about his
parentage in the presence of twenty hostile Frost Giants. He would have to go
about this indirectly.
“If you will dismiss none of your men, then I ask that you
answer three questions.”
“One or three, it matters not. But ask quickly; the dinner
hour draws on.”
“And who knows what may happen when you let Jötnar get
hungry enough,” said one especially hulking guard behind the throne, baring his
teeth. The assembled giants laughed; it seemed that they knew of the stories
Aesir parents told their children to make them behave, or at least suspected.
“Peace, Byleistr,” Laufey said without heat. “Ask, Asgardian.”
“Did Odin take anything from you at the end of the war,
other than the Casket?”
“Aside from the lives, freedom, and honor of my people?”
“Yes, aside from that. And something taken from you
specifically.”
Laufey’s face darkened. “You dare to speak to me of my
beloved Queen?”
Loki cursed himself silently; he had known that Queen
Farbauti was killed in the fighting at the very end of the war. “No. Of…
something she may have left behind.”
Laufey’s eyes narrowed. “It seems this ignorant Asgardian is
of little threat to me,” he announced. “I will speak with him in my private
chambers. My sons, Helblindi and Byleistr, will join me, and as guard I shall
have only my esteemed warrioress Hvedra.”
Laufey stood abruptly from the throne and the two giants who
had flanked it—his sons, apparently—followed him down the steps from the dais.
The one who had not spoken, Helblindi, had a scar across his forehead and held
one arm stiffly at his side. One of the giants who had been standing in the
hall peeled away from her fellows, looking somewhat bewildered. Loki would not
have identified her as a female had Laufey not called her “warrioress”; she
looked much like her male companions, down to the bare chest, flat and
muscular.
Loki followed the giants through a passageway behind the
throne into another ice-cave, larger than the one he had come through and
furnished with a long table and six chairs, all carved of ice. Other openings
in the walls of the cave no doubt led to other chambers deeper in the glacier.
Laufey sat at the head of the table and his sons took their places to either
side. Hvedra remained standing, looking uncertain what to do, and so did Loki:
all of the chairs were too large and slick for him to climb into unaided.
“Hvedra, would you assist our honored guest?” Laufey asked,
noting Loki’s embarrassment.
Loki feared that the giantess would lift him by his armpits
as if he were a child, but instead she knelt and made a bridge of her hands as
if she were an Asgardian gallant helping a lady mount a horse. “Thank you, my
lady,” Loki said once he was seated on the chair opposite Laufey’s. His legs
dangled awkwardly and he could not make use of the backrest without reclining,
so instead he held himself stiffly upright. The ice of the chair chilled him
even through his cloak and thick leather trousers.
Once Hvedra had seated herself beside Byleistr, on Laufey’s
left, Laufey spoke—but instead of addressing Loki, he turned to the giantess
and said, “Hvedra, you saw when Alsvart was killed, did you not?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, looking only slightly less
puzzled than before.
“And you told me that something strange happened before his
death.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. The Asgardian who killed him”—her eyes
flickered briefly toward Loki before she turned back to her king—“Alsvart
grabbed his wrist and tried to burn him with cold” (Loki could tell that the
phrase in the All-Tongue translated a single Jötun word) “but he did not burn.
Instead, his hand and arm turned blue and marked, like a Jötun’s.”
This Alsvart had not been able to burn Loki with cold, but it
seemed Hvedra’s words could. He felt an echo of the same prickling numbness,
the same disoriented nausea, that he had felt—could it have been only the day
before?
“Is this the man who killed Alsvart?” Laufey asked, nodding
toward Loki.
Hvedra turned and scrutinized his face. “It is hard to say
for sure, they all look so similar… but he did have dark hair of about that
length and wore a dark green coat. And he killed Alsvart with a dagger he
pulled from the air.”
“Thank you, Hvedra.” Laufey turned burning eyes on Loki. “I
would be mad to ask you to pull a dagger from the air… but can you summon
something else?”
Loki was not sure it was wise to admit to having killed this
Alsvart… but they already knew he had slain many of their brethren, and Laufey
wanted him to prove that he was the one with the blue hand. So instead of a
dagger he pulled a book from one of his pocket dimensions and tossed it onto
the table.
Laufey nodded. Now he turned to Helblindi. “Burn his face
with cold,” he commanded.
Stone-faced, Helblindi rose, still holding his arm stiff,
and approached Loki, closing the distance swiftly with his long strides. Loki
did not move; he only flinched a little when Helblindi grasped his jaw in one
massive hand. He felt cold radiating from Helblindi’s fingers, but then warmth
suffused his face, the same warmth that had washed over him when he had held
the Casket.
Hvedra hissed in a sudden breath; “Well, fuck me,” muttered
Byleistr. Laufey shot his son a reproving look. Helblindi withdrew his hand and
Loki’s face could feel once more the chill of the frozen realm.
“You ask if my wife left anything behind at the end of the
war,” Laufey began. “She did bear a child, the day before she was killed. I
begged her not to rejoin the fighting so soon after, but… she was a warrior to
the last.” Grief was written starkly in the haggard lines of his face.
“And the child?” Loki asked. He could hear his voice
trembling, shameful as it was, and his tongue felt thick and heavy.
“It was one of the small ones,” Laufey said. His voice
sounded strangely flat. “She wanted to keep it, but the priests said it was
sacrilege, and would call down the wrath of the gods. That we must keep to the
old ways, especially in our hour of trial.”
“The small ones,”
Loki repeated. His own voice seemed to him to come from very far away.
“The old tales call them the children of the air and snow,
who must be returned to air and snow. But I do not credit such superstition.
Our people began leaving them to die as infants because otherwise they would
have died as children; it saved them and their parents a few years of
suffering. Perhaps we know enough now to allow them to survive to adulthood;
apparently Asgard does. But ancient customs are slow to fade, even when they
have lost their original purpose.”
Loki’s nausea seemed to have doubled. He abruptly realized
how much he had been hoping that Odin had lied, that he had parents who loved
and wanted him but were forced to give him up for the sake of peace…
“The priests fled the temple as the Asgardian army
approached. Those that survived returned to find that the baby was gone: its
body could not be burned, returned to the air as the gods demand. I killed the priests for their negligence and cowardice, and let the people think the Asgardians had
slain them in the temple they served. I thought the Asgardians must have found
the baby’s frozen corpse and disposed of it… but it seems I was wrong.”
“Odin told me I was your son,” Loki whispered hoarsely. “How
did he know?”
“Your heritage lines. Odin doesn’t let it be widely known,
but his mother was a Jötun: Bestla, my father’s sister. She was a shapeshifter,
like you, so she spent most of her life in Aesir form… which made it easier,
when relations between the realms turned hostile, to conceal the king’s kinship
with the enemy. But Bestla must have taught her son to read the markings of her
house, the royal house. He saw them on your face and he knew.”
Heritage lines? Loki
had never known that the marks on the Jötnar’s skin had any more meaning than a
tiger’s stripes. And he had known his grandmother’s name and even her face,
from the murals on the walls of the throne room, but knew nothing of her true
origin.
“Do you regret it?” Loki asked. His voice came out almost
strangled.
Laufey gave a sharp derisive sigh. “You want me to say how
remorseful I am for abandoning you. Sorry to disappoint you, boy. What would I
have done with a sickly motherless runt? The realm was suffering; my people
would have resented me for it, said the resources should be spent on worthier
lives.” He paused. “I do regret that Odin got his hands on you.” His mouth
twisted. “He styles himself ‘All-Father,’ father of all the Realms. ‘Father of
Lies’ is a truer name for him. And he has turned you into a liar like himself. I
should have slit your throat rather than let him take you.”
He has turned you into
a liar like himself. But how did Laufey know that? “So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.” Of course.
But in deceiving Odin (to show him the truth about Thor!), he had only been
following Odin’s tutelage. Father of
Lies. I should have slit your throat.
Loki hardly felt attached to his own body: the
sensations of stiffness, cold, and even nausea seemed to belong to someone else;
the sound of Laufey’s voice seemed distant and hollow. All he could hear was
his own heartbeat in his ears and he felt as though he was watching himself
from within when he grasped a knife from its pocket dimension and threw it
without aiming into Laufey’s throat.
Loki is the Philosopher King 